


Point of View

by Shadow_Chaser



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, And is a sucker for all of the times Peggy mourns for Steve during "Agent Carter", Author wants a relatively happy moment for Steve even if it will not be a happy ending, Author was very inspired by Peggy and Howard's talk in Episode 4 of "Agent Carter", Because she secretly adores MCU!Steve, Compliant up to Episode 4 of "Agent Carter", Gen, Guest appearances by certain types of Steve Rogers in different universes, Is there such thing as happy angst?, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2 compliant (except Bucky parts in relation to AOU), happy angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Chaser/pseuds/Shadow_Chaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An 0-8-4 discovered by Team Coulson and left with Tony Stark has unexpected consequences and deadly ramifications (time-travel fic).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not related to the Trickster Universe and is a stand-alone. It takes place about six or so months after "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and in between Team Coulson discovering the location of the lost city in Season 2 of "Agents of SHIELD."
> 
> A few assumptions: The Avengers know of Coulson's survival and that he's running around with a new team (they do not know he's the new Director). A few months have passed since Bucky was brought back to Avengers Tower to recuperate and rehabilitate.
> 
> Some of the Avengers will show up near the end of the story, but this is mostly Steve, Peggy, Tony, and Howard Stark-centric with a dash of Edwin Jarvis and Bucky thrown in. Massive spoilers for "Agent Carter" up to Episode 4 – which serves as the inspiration for this side story. The title for this story references an old "Stargate SG-1" episode.

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Prologue_

 

“Did Coulson send the files on this 0-8-4 he and his team found- Where was it again?” Tony asked as he blinked the tears back from his eyes, the acrid smoke still wafting an unpleasant smell in his workshop.

“He did sir,” JARVIS's mechanized voice sounded a little disgruntled, but Tony did not think it was due to the flashing lights and thankfully silenced alarms. “He also did warn that the files had been encrypted with a code that he vaguely recognized as your father's style – thus why he sent it to us in the first place.”

“Yeah, um, didn't happen to decrypt those before, er...this happened did you J?” Tony resisted waving his hand in front of his face to clear the smoke and smell, having just done that to only result in fighting back more tears.

“No sir, this was a spontaneous reaction,” JARVIS replied politely, “though I do not seem to have seen a cipher left behind in SHIELD's files nor on Stark Industries servers.”

“Maybe it's on paper; send Pep a note about it to see if she can find something in the archives back out in California,” Tony gasped a little before coughing, having now inhaled the acrid smoke, “hey J, what about those fans-”

“They are moving as fast as possible, but it seems that this is no ordinary smoke, sir-”

“Ya think?” Tony coughed again before shaking his head and letting loose a soft quiet breath. He stared at the three figures standing where said 0-8-4 used to- No, it was still there, at least from what he could tell. The table it was on wasn't there anymore, but Tony had a nasty feeling that it had...teleported, for the lack of a better term to where these three had been. Whoever was there with the three was going to get a nasty surprise and maybe a few advance looking screwdrivers and general automotive tools in the large toolbox the 0-8-4 had been placed next to.

Each one of them was coughing, but through the semi-opaque white smoke that surrounded them, he could tell that two of them were male and one was female. Tony coughed again and gave up as he waved his hand in front of his face, fanning even more of the white acrid smoke into his eyes and grunted as he wiped at them. “J, do _something_ about this-”

Tony felt his words get lodged in his throat as the fans finally did their work and started to thin the smoke out of the workshop. He could not help but _stare_ at the three figures, two of whom he vague recognized, but the last one. The last one could easily pass for himself if he had been inclined to wear late 1940s men's fashion.

“...Dad...” he whispered as the three turned to look at their surroundings and focused their eyes on him. The 0-8-4 had somehow impossibly teleported Edwin Jarvis, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark into the 21st Century.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This still will have slow updates due to me writing in my Trickster Universe. But I'm hoping it'll be a short(er) story so I can finish it quickly and get back to writing in Ragnarok.


	2. Part 1 - Ripple Effect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Season 9 episode of "Stargate SG-1."

_Part 1 – Ripple Effect_

 

Tony never gawked. It was such a...distasteful word: gawking. Sounded something a bird would do and it was so _touristy_. Tourists gawked. Tony Stark never gawked. He stared. Yes, he stared, leered, wanted, admired, enjoyed, found-”it”-pleasant-to-look-at, all sorts of things but he never gawked. Not once in his whole life, even when Angela was the cutest girl in his grade and he fell in love with her at first sight when she kicked the ball into his face during the first grade rivalry kickball game.

He stared...okay, maybe he was gawking.

Howard Stark stared back and oddly enough, the two of them blinked at the same time before Tony forced himself to look away, trying to find _something_ else to stare at. And found himself focusing on Peggy Carter. His first immediate thought was that Peggy was definitely a looker and that Steve was a lucky bastard. His second thought, hot on the heels of his first one, was that he was in so much trouble - focused on the glare he was receiving which made him feel like he was just a kid again being reprimanded by Aunt Peggy.

“See something you like?” her words were acidic and full of disdain that made Tony want to shrink right into the ground before he managed to compose himself and coughed lightly.

“Uh, hi,” he cleared his throat, “um, I'm Tony, and uh-”

“Are you Leviathan?” Tony's earliest memory of Peggy Carter was fifty-something woman who had the sharpest tongue and meanest wit ever. She certainly taught him some of the more acidic responses he had to people who pushed him around when he was a kid. He certainly now believed the stories with the silvery-gun she now pointed at his face in the second it took him to blink.

It took him another second to process her question and he spluttered, “W-What? Leviathan? What-”

“Leviathan, what do you know about it?” none of the SSR files or SHIELD's files spoke of Peggy being this bold or reckless as she suddenly marched forward, gun still pointed at him with an uncannily unwavering grip. He belatedly realized that she had marched right up into his personal space and pointed it straight at his chest – right where his miniature arc reactor used to be.

Though he had no qualms about a woman getting up into his personal space, finding it kind of kinky with a pseudo dominance of sorts, he found himself backing up and right into one of his tables, hands held up in a universal gesture of surrender. “I have no idea-”

“Don't lie,” though she was at least a head shorter than he, she somehow made him feel like she was towering over him and he tried to gently push back.

“Okay, okay, um, why don't you lower your gun-”

“Talk, _Tony_ , that's your name, right? Are you impersonating Howard? Is that what Leviathan is trying to do? Is that what you're trying to do? Force Howard to be charged for crimes so you can seemingly sell his weapons to the highest bidder in the black market-”

“Oh...” Tony realized what _year_ the three had just come from though he had literally no idea what the heck was this 'Leviathan' Peggy was talking about. “Ohhhhh....” When Tony had been growing up in the late sixties-early seventies, he remembered some of the dinner parties his father used to throw. There were many stories told in Howard Stark's speeches, but there was one that was always repeated more than once – the story of how the U.S. Government had accused him of stealing weapons to sell on the black market and how they had repaid the mea culpa to him after he had been found completely innocent and exonerated of all charges. It had happened almost right after the war and Howard never let people forget it.

“Peg, might want to back off, I think he's going to talk,” Howard spoke up behind her. Tony saw him take a step forward, though his butler Jarvis looked a little nervous and almost took an imperceptible half-step in front of Howard to protect him. Something in him twisted a bit painfully at the gesture, almost as if it had been long forgotten but recently remembered.

“1946?” he tested out and saw Peggy frown.

“What about this year?” she replied and he nodded absently.

“Thought so,” he mused quietly before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Okay...hooboy...so... Um, honestly, I have no idea what Leviathan you're talking about- Hey-wait, I'm telling the truth here Peggy!” he had raised his hands higher as Peggy pointed the gun at him again before her eyes narrowed dangerously and Tony realized that he had broken the first rule of a seemingly impossible Einstein theory – time-travel revelation with the potential of creating a paradox. His next thought raced along the lines of possibilities and impossibilities, calculating through the variables and trajectories of just revealing he knew Peggy's name along with everything else he knew- Did he violate the Grandfather theory that all movies seem to make seem like a big faux pas? Or did that theory not exist and if he did, did he create an alternate timeline by just saying her name? Were they already in an alternate timeline?!

In the seconds it took his thoughts to race along the multitude of paths, he realized that he needed to say something else _before_ Peggy Carter fired her gun at him. “Okay, okay, you've got me, okay?” he lowered his hands, holding him out in front of him and saw her gun lower fractionally, but her finger still rested near the trigger.

“Talk,” she said, her voice still hard and not even giving him an inch based on the gesture he had made. Tony had heard the stories his father always told about “Auntie” Peggy, had not really believed them even growing up and occasionally seeing her actually kick butt, but now...now he really believed them. Peggy Carter scared him with her relentless steel and unflappable demeanor, even when she held her gun with the steadiest of aim.

He tried for a smile, but only found her stony look grow a little harder and coughed lightly. So far, everything was as he remembered, nothing noteworthy that stood out in his mind – though he supposed if he did accidentally send himself into an alternate reality, it would be the same thoughts running through his head. But he was mostly sure that he had not enacted a Grandfather Clause or something time and dimension shattering. The only saving grace was that he now knew at least one of the capabilities of the 0-8-4 that Coulson had left with him; time travel. Or some variation thereof. Still heady stuff if one thought a little too hard about it, but maybe since the world had not exploded, he had not done any irreparable harm or damage to Einstein field equations of general relativity or even created a temporal paradox – at least that was the hope.

The other theory was that it was a perfectly stable time loop.

The only problem with that theory is that he had no _idea_ what made it a stable time loop. Was it that he did not say much, spilled everything, or did not even say a thing at all? Tony was hinging on this theory more than the other one not because of some physics or astronomical impossibility, but for the simple fact that his head was starting to spin and _hurt_ from even thinking about all of this.

“This is like a bad rendition of _Back to the Future_ or something,” he muttered mostly under his breath. Dr. Jane Foster would probably have a field day or something with the astrophysics involved in time travel and it would have been his first suggestion to contact her, but she had been incommunicado for the last few months – or at least nowhere near her email or cellphone. He supposed that after the very public fall of SHIELD she and her friends probably had the foresight to change all of their phone numbers and maybe move elsewhere so that HYDRA would not be able to get their dirty little hands on them.

Or perhaps she was up in Asgard again. The BBC had reported a Thor sighting about a year ago followed by several Bifrost activation sites that heralded Thor's return and leaving over the past year. Who was to say that Jane wasn't currently in Asgard safe and away from all of this – it was Thor's priority to see to her safety after he had first appeared to go after Loki a two and a half years ago.

“So, um,” Tony wanted to rub his hands together, but judging by Peggy's icy look at him, he was not inclined to get a bullet in his chest and so refrained from doing anything. “Where to start...” he blew out a quiet breath, “no, I'm not trying to impersonate Da-uh, Howard over there. I, uh...just so happen to look like him – at least that's what people always said.”

Peggy only blinked once, unconvinced and Tony continued hurriedly, “And honestly I have no idea what the heck you guys mean by Leviathan, but I'm hazarding a guess here that you guys have something similar to, uh, that?”

“Howard?” Peggy did not look back as she addressed him and Tony saw beyond her white-bloused shoulder to see him scrambling to pick up the 0-8-4 that had fallen to the floor and was completely inert. Tony wanted to mention something about latent radiation and dangerous things that should not be handled with bare hands until Howard produced a handkerchief from his pocket and gingerly picked up the object with his hand in it. It wasn't much, but Tony took the peace of mind for what it was.

“Yep, looks like our suspect,” his father's voice was a lot...lighter than Tony remembered and he blinked several times. He was stunned at how it sounded without the stress, worry, and gruffness that he had come to associate with his father when he had been growing up. “Definitely not active though, unlike what just happened.”

“Well?” Peggy tilted her head fractionally at Tony and he saw Howard put it down again, shaking his handkerchief off before Jarvis took it from him and produced a cleaner one for him to carry.

“Well...?” Tony had no idea what she was asking and saw her frown, irritation flashing across her dark brown eyes.

“What did you do to make it inactive?” she gestured with her chin towards the inert 0-8-4 and he shook his head.

“What makes you think I know-”

“You did _something_ -”

“Listen Peggy, I have no idea-”

“And how do you know my name?” she cut him off, “you claim not to be Leviathan-”

“I'm not!”

“Then how do you explain all of this?” she gestured with her free hand to the surrounding workshop.

“An advancement in technology that can't even be replicated from 1946 and quite possibly will make all three of you really rich if you've managed to memorize everything there is about the future- J,” he said really quickly before calling out to JARVIS, “am I going to end up being my own grandfather after this?!”

“I can't begin to calculate that sir,” JARVIS's voice piped down politely, but it made all three of his unexpected guests jump and look wildly into the air. Peggy's gun waved all over the place for a few seconds before she trained it back on him, shaking her head.

“What was that?” she demanded, “who else do you have here-”

“Just me...err, well, not really. I mean there's a few thousand employees in this building alone that work for me, but they're on the other floors below and this is just my personal workshop and, er, well, it's where I live-”

“Is that a transistor-based phonograph model?” Howard suddenly interrupted and Tony glanced back at him to see him peering beyond him. Tony turned to look over his shoulder and saw that indeed his father's transistor phonograph, one of the first to be made in 1955, was sitting on the table, playing one of the 45s he had in his vast collection that Tony had inherited. In fact, it had been playing one of Duke Ellington's pieces while he had been researching and scanning the 0-8-4.

“Err...yes...?” Tony realized that it was nine years out until the first transistor-style phonograph would be created and wondered if he had irreparably changed the course of history. He searched his memories...and it did not seem like his father had invented it since his mind still registered the vague memory and image of the phonograph to have been brought in 1955, or rather 1954. Maybe he did change history a little...or his father had created something yet again that was limited by the technology of his time.

“I've never seen one before-”

“Howard!” Peggy's firm tone stopped the other man from moving forward to look at the thing and Tony snapped his attention back to her as she raised her gun a little higher.

“You steal technology like Howard's to sell on the black market-”

“No!” Tony shook his head before he sighed and resisted the urge to scrub his face, “J, what's the odds that the others are going to have their history altered from this?”

“Unknown, sir,” JARVIS replied and he saw the three flinch again, but while Peggy and Jarvis looked suspicious of the computerized voice coming from all directions, Howard had the most peculiar look on his face as he stared up at the ceiling; as if he was trying to puzzle out where it came from. “But based on recent scans, I am willing to put forth the notion of a potential stable time loop, sir.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tony snorted quietly, “hooboy...okay, Peggy, please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy, _don't_ shoot me after I tell you this because one, you'll probably set off the internal alarms in this place, and two, I really don't want a certain person coming down here to find you guys. Actually, make that certain two people. J, you know who the hell I'm talking about, where is Thing Two anyways?”

“He has been where he was this morning sir,” Tony was grateful that he had programmed JARVIS for some discretion and that his A.I. was very good at picking up his cues or lack thereof at times.

“Good,” Tony was _not_ ready to handle the possibility of 'Thing Two.' It was his nickname for the stray 'Thing One' had brought home roughly two and half months ago. 'Thing One' only got his name because Steve would not leave 'Thing Two's' side and stuck to him like glue. Plus, it was one of the few references that Steve got that always elicited a reaction from him. All other pairing references mostly induced a shaking of the head or a confused reaction meaning he had not seen the movie, television show, comic, or even caught up on memes. Calling Steve 'Thing One' and his thought-to-be-dead-former-best-friend 'Thing Two' was funny...until Steve actually called him the Cat in the Hat back one day – making Tony laugh long and loud.

“Thing One?” he queried.

“En route from the hospice,” JARVIS replied and Tony cursed inwardly.

That was not good. There was no conceivable emergency he could cook up to prevent Steve from entering the tower. One, because it was _Steve_ they were talking about and he would run headlong into danger to save whomever needed to be saved. And two, it was _Steve;_ because besides spending time with Peggy Carter in the hospice, he would spend the rest of his time with a one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes in hopes of helping him recover from his long years as the Winter Soldier. The only time he would not spend with the two was if he had a mission that Maria Hill gave them courtesy of Coulson's limited intel or otherwise, or if Sam was around and forcibly pushed him outside for a run or something.

“Calling for back up?” Peggy asked, eyes narrowed at him.

“It's not human, is it?” Howard interrupted them, staring and pointing vaguely at the ceiling.

“E-Excuse me?” Tony blinked and stared at his father who rubbed his chin, still staring up at the ceiling.

“That voice that keeps talking to you, 'J' was it?” Howard said, “it's not human...I think. The modulation, kind of a bit off, like it's coming through the speakers, but with a little more clarity. The cadence is marvelous, definitely very human-like, but there's something about it that doesn't sound like it's human.”

“Former HYDRA mechanized robotics?” Peggy asked, as she kept her eyes on Tony who flicked a look at her. “Is that what Leviathan is? Is this what this 'J' is you keep talking to? Leviathan?”

“From Hebrew, meaning whale, it's referenced in the Bible in Job 41, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1. Psalm 74 references that Leviathan has multiple heads, allusion to HYDRA-”

“Are you the new head of HYDRA after Johann Schmidt died?” Tony took a definite step back at the sudden coldness in Peggy's voice as she cut into what JARVIS was saying.

“Yeah, no, if anything I'm one of the people that will help cut the damn head off and burn the stump so it _doesn't_ grow back,” he replied defensively, “HYDRA killed my fa- er, they killed people I cared about. I'll gladly watch them burn in hell.”

“Then why do you look like Howard here? Why the deception?” Peggy demanded once more and Tony finally gave into the urge and scrubbed his face, earning the click of the gun's safety being disarmed, but he was nearly at his limit.

“J, if everything changes after this, I want you to record all of this for posterity and play it back to me telling me what an asshole idiot I am, okay, for screwing up and plunging us into an alternate timeline.”

“As always, sir,” JARVIS replied politely and Tony half rolled his eyes at the snide tone his A.I. adopted.

“I look like Howard here because you guys aren't in 1946 anymore. It's September 17th, 2014 and I'm Tony Stark,” he gestured to Howard, “I'm Howard Stark's son.”

Two pairs of disbelieving eyes met his own and Tony only had a split second to think that there had been three before he stars exploded in his vision along with a flash of pain, then blackness.

* * *

Howard could only stare as the man who called himself Tony, or rather, Tony _Stark_ , crumpled to the ground, Jarvis standing near him with a rather large wrench in his hand. “What-”

“Let's go. It could still be a trap,” Peggy was having none of it and gestured roughly for them to hurry towards the door, shooting the glass out with two shots. He nodded numbly as he forced himself to move past the older man's limp form, a part of him whispering apologies for what was definitely going to be a rather large shiner on his head when he awoke. He had not expected the older man to say that he was his son. Granted, the man's words before that was incomprehensible; after he told them that they had somehow, impossibly, traveled to the year 2014. It had to be a trick...

“Sir,” Jarvis' was by his side once more, wrench still in hand and Howard shook his head, waving away his butler and friend's concern.

“I'm fine...just...” he ascended the stairs following Peggy as she cleared the stairs in front of her with a professional aplomb. He bit his lip as he glanced back down towards the direction of the workshop they had messily exited from, feeling oddly paternal. Maybe it was because the other man looked eerily like him. Maybe it was something he had said that made him want to go back downstairs and make sure that this Tony was all right before escaping with Peggy and Jarvis.

“Don't let him get into your head, Howard,” Peggy called back sharply and he huffed out a breath, focusing him as he nodded once.

“Right,” he tried to banish all images of Tony lying crumpled on the ground from his mind and instead, watched the stairs that they were climbing. There was no alarm, nothing to indicate that they had alerted any of the others in this building, but the further up they climbed, the more Howard was thinking that maybe this Tony was right. Maybe they had somehow traveled to the future. The stairs for one, the lighting for another in the stairs, everything looked _bright_ , clean, and polished. There was also the smell. It wasn't antiseptic, no, it just smelled different, like there was something metallic tinged with a sourness that had the faint odor of being at a molding factory. The sourness wasn't that bad, it just smelled a bit odd and for some reason, he thought the smell was commonplace.

“Here,” Peggy said after a few more flights and exited through another pane of glass shattering with a couple of bullets.

“Ma'am, might I suggest you not go that way-”

Howard blinked at the intrusion of the 'J' voice, but it was too late for whatever the voice, or whomever was at the end of the voice was saying as he stepped out into what looked like a really nice looking penthouse floor. He would have admired the décor except for the sudden stricken look on Peggy's face as she stared at a fixed point to his left. He looked towards the fixed point as did Jarvis and Howard felt the bottom of his stomach suddenly drop out.

“Oh my stars...” Jarvis whispered next to him.

“S-Steve?” Peggy's voice was a strangled hush whisper as standing near a set of elevators a few feet away from them was none other than Steve Rogers come back from the dead.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all who have kudos this story - I was very shocked at the response and very touched! See you in the next part!


	3. Part 2 - Forever in a Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 title from "Stargate SG-1" Season 3 episode.

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Part 2 – Forever in a Day_

 

When Steve Rogers first visited an elderly Peggy Carter in the hospice she had been placed at, he did not understand what the nurses and caretakers were telling him. They said dementia, Alzheimer's, senility, occasional lucid periods followed by rapid degeneration of lucidity. They said that she was sprightly and active, but that her memory lapses were prone to making her lose some motor coordination and become extremely dizzy and dehydrated. She always had a cup of water nearby in case she coughed too much or became very dizzied. Her caretaker waited nearby during his first visit as he had visited Peggy. He had not really understood their concerns and worries until it had been several hours into his visit and Peggy looked like she was about to fall asleep in her chair when she coughed violently for a few seconds before looking back up at him and asked with all of the broken-hearted wonder if he really was alive.

Even then, Steve had been a bit confused and had replied that he was, that it was what they had spent the last few hours talking about – she had only responded with confusion etched across her beautiful lined features before starting to cry again – just like she had when she had first seen him hours before. The caretaker had intervened then and gently escorted him out before Peggy's condition worsened and left Steve by the front desk of the hospice, blinking in confusion, sadness, and feeling like an elephant had sat right on his heart and lungs, unwilling to let him breathe.

He had returned to his SHIELD issued apartment in D.C. – not the one at Dupont Circle – and had spent the night researching all of the words and phrases the nurses and caretakers had told him about earlier. There was no sleep that night as he looked up all of the articles he could find on the internet, rifling through speculation, alternative medicines, and getting to the heart of the matter, the stories told by others who had relatives in similar situations. The next day, after muddling through a re-training course to which he only half-heartedly paid attention to – and suspected the instructor knew where he had been last night considering the relative ease he had been taught that day – he asked for a meeting with Director Fury. Surprisingly, Fury had granted his request before he realized SHIELD knew where he was at all times and knew he had finally visited Peggy; because the first thing out of Fury's mouth was that with all of their advance technologies, they still could not find a way to reverse Peggy Carter's condition.

So he prepared himself as best as he could with each visit to Peggy's hospice. Most of the time, Peggy was still sharp as a tack and the same woman he remembered from back in the war. He found that he was able to talk to her about a few things, acclimating to the 21 st Century, the changes in music, dancing, even about his work at SHIELD after he had officially accepted an honorable discharge from the United States Armed Forces to join SHIELD as an independent contractor. He told Peggy about retaining his rank and pension, about his teams, about STRIKE Delta, generally everything up until SHIELD fall with HYDRA's reveal.

It had been roughly six months since the implosion of SHIELD, two and half months since he had brought Bucky home and Steve had avoided talking to Peggy about anything related to those subjects. He mostly just talked about taking a break from SHIELD's work to travel the world – and find Bucky and the sheer destruction he left behind as clues – along with the latest in the Avengers Initiative. Even with her frail health, he could see that Peggy could tell he was hiding something, but she was too polite to ask and for that, he had been extremely grateful. She had always offered her advice in her lucid moments before occasionally reverting back to when she had first seen him in over seventy years. Those were the moments that Steve fought back tears, fought back the pain of something crushing his heart and lungs until he could not breathe, to help Peggy through until that moment was gone or she had fallen asleep.

He never allowed himself to think about the lost moments, the 'what ifs' of a potential life with Peggy, having long agreed with her that she had lived a fulfilling life while he had just started his post-war. But they both knew that each sought a semblance of comfort with his visits, long denied to them by the ravages of time. But the dark moments were few and far in between, Steve enjoying the conversations, learning about the years that he only had history books now to read. Sometimes, when Peggy had a few good days, Steve would bring up bits and pieces of history he had read about that day and she would provide her own perspective on what had happened in the general sense; relaying a story about her days in SHIELD or even her home life with her children and husband.

Today was the tail end of one of those days, Steve having asked her about the start of the NASA Program and science related aspects that still puzzled him. She had told a few things about the early days of SHIELD in relation to NASA before she had asked what day it was and he had thought she had a relapse before she asked again. He told her it was September 17 th , 2014 and she had only smiled mysteriously before patting his hand. She had then said that it was a day that she would remember and it had scared him for a second that she had planned to die after he left, but she only said that the memories were not as sharp, but she knew that today was an important day. She had also said a phrase that he had no idea what it meant, entro-something cas-something failure. He had wondered if she was experiencing a major relapse, but she had left it at that and told him to go home, that she expected to see him in a day or two to talk about his day after he left.

Steve, in all of his visits to see Peggy, had never heard her speak like that and had stared at her for a long moment before she gently ordered him to get another blanket and to go home. She mumbled something about a doddering old woman being fine for a few days as he got her the blanket and watch her fall asleep. He stayed with her for a few minutes after that, just staring at her, tracing her lined face, remembering the soft upturn curves of her lips, still seeing it to this very day before he left quietly, telling her nurse that she had acted a little weirdly that morning. Her nurse had replied that she had been unusually giddy about this particular day, but would watch her closely to make sure she did not exert herself or have a bad relapse. He had thanked her and left.

The trip back to New York City was almost uneventful and as Steve rode the elevator up from the garage - having successfully avoided most of the paparazzi and tourists who constantly congregated at the foot of Avengers Tower – he shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. It had been a gift of sorts from one of the brass when he had visited Walter Reed a couple of months before the Chitauri invaded. It had happened during the time when the military was trying to decide whether he should continue serving or be discharged from service. His joining of SHIELD as a private military contractor eventually had the military honorably discharge him with full pension and benefits accrued in the seventy or so years he had been missing in action.

“Sir...” JARVIS sounded hesitant and Steve glanced up at the elevator's ceiling. He knew that JARVIS's cameras were probably in the corners, but he could not help his habit at trying to address the advance artificial intelligence system that Stark had installed into the tower and his suits. It had taken him a few weeks to get used to the fact that JARVIS was literally everywhere and subsequently cameras and newfangled sensors of sorts – which still confused him since he didn't quite get what they were - were also everywhere.

“What is it JARVIS?” he asked, but a small niggle of worry pooled in him. The A.I. was almost unflappably calm, even when Stark was up to his usual antics. JARVIS had also been extremely helpful in providing supplementary information, especially when he had followed Bucky's bloody trail of revenge and brought him back to the tower.

The lack of a response from the A.I. as he arrived on the main floor of the penthouse puzzled Steve. But he did not get to think much of it when the sound of several feet echoed from the nearby stairwell as he stepped off of the elevator and looked towards it in time to see the door burst open-

And Steve received the shock of his life, his super-soldiered heart skipping a beat at the sight of a very much alive, very young Howard Stark and his ever faithful butler Edwin Jarvis. But what really rooted him to the spot was the beautiful, proud, utterly  _youthful_ face of Peggy Carter.

“Oh my stars...” Jarvis whispered, but he only had eyes for Peggy.

“S-Steve?” she looked white as a sheet and Steve could not help but  _stare_ .

It was as if his brain had short-circuited, his mind trying to comprehend the fact that he had just come from seeing  _Peggy_ at the hospice, still beautiful in her own way, but with wrinkles and a vitality that was waning. This... _woman_ in front of him...she was... Steve blinked as if he could suddenly not see Peggy in all of her youth, his mouth unconscious opening and working around to try to say  _something_ , but nothing would come out. A small sound echoed in wake of the silence, before he realized that it had come from Peggy, halfway between a choked cry and something he could not identify.

“P-Peggy?” he whispered, suddenly wanting to do nothing more than reach out to her, but she started to shake her head.

“No, no...it can't be...you can't...” it was only then that he realized that she was pointing a gun straight at him, her usually steady arm shaking like a leaf. He took a small cautious step back, keeping his hands loose by his side to show that he was not going to do anything. He wanted to rush to her side and scoop her up into his arms, but another part of him wanted to placing a call to the hospice to see if the elderly Peggy Carter he had just visited was still there – because there was no way that the ones he had called friends, Jarvis included for the rare times he had interacted with the man, was standing in front of him. No possible way.

He instead found himself rooted to the spot, his mind running in circles as to  _how_ something like this could happen. How could Peggy, who looked just as he remembered the day before they had assaulted the Red Skull's base of operations, be here and when he had just seen her aged self at the hospice? How could  _Howard_ of all people, be here – though truth be told, he looked a little more worn than Steve remembered; heck even Jarvis. He opened his mouth again, not knowing what he was going to say, but wanting to say something. However, before he could utter a single sound Peggy tightened her grip on her pistol.

“No,” she said, her voice hard, her expression furiously hurt, “no, you can't. You can't be him. You-” Her nostrils flared as she blew out a forceful breath, “Who are you?! Who?!”

Steve was reminded in a not-so-good way of the time he had gotten caught by Peggy kissing Private Lorraine. This time, though, he had a feeling it would not end so well if she emptied her gun at him. For one thing, his shield was sitting in his suite a few floors above the main penthouse area.

“Miss Carter-”

“Shut up Jarvis,” she said without looking back at Howard's butler who took a step towards her, but stopped at her words. She continued to glare at Steve. “Is this another sick joke by Leviathan? Because he, she,  _they_ , know that we worked with-” her expression crumpled as she bit her lip and shook her head again, “you  _can't be_ ...”

Steve felt his breath hitch again at the naked agony in her expression, the pain of loss that he had never realized how much she had  _mourned_ . It tugged painfully at his heart, to see the shadows of such loss on Peggy's elderly face whenever she had one of her relapses. He had seen some of the pain during those times, had answered as best as he could to try to comfort him, but he had not know how much Peggy mourned until now. It was as if the same shadow of pain was now magnified tenfold on Peggy's youthful face. He grimaced, wanting to do nothing more than to make it disappear, to tell her that he was there-

But it was Howard who stepped forward, gently placing an arm on Peggy's outstretched one, his other one closing around the barrel of the pistol and lowering it. “Peg, it's okay...it's okay. Look, he's not doing anything...he's not going to hurt us-”

Steve inwardly reeled, feeling like someone had suddenly stabbed him in the gut and ripped the serrated blade up through his sternum. What had  _happened_ to make Howard of all people say something like that, especially about him? “I would never hurt-” he started, but did not get to finish as the other elevator swished open and Tony practically ran out of it, wincing a little as he gingerly touched the side of his head, but straightened at the sight of them.

“Oh thank God, no one's been shot yet,” Tony huffed out in relief and Steve stared at him for a second before he realized that Tony knew about this, about the three in front of him.

“What's-”

“Coulson's little 0-8-4 present from last week, kind of is maybe, I dunno, a time travel machine?” Stark cut him off before gesturing to the others, “okay, guys, this is really Steve Rogers. Please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy,  _don't_ shoot him because you'll really regret it.”

Steve opened his mouth to ask what he was going on about before Tony gave him a look.

“Thing Two's kind of somewhere here. I don't know where, but J's saying that he's somewhere here. He's been actively avoiding the sensors and stuff, staying to the shadows again, but J's seen his shadow somewhere in the building.”

That got Steve's attention. Bucky.

Bucky was more than likely watching this whole thing from somewhere in the air ducts or shadows where Jarvis' sensors and cameras could not pick him up. Steve had almost forgotten about Bucky in the mere minutes he had literally ran into Howard, Jarvis, and Peggy. Stark's unspoken warning about Bucky's precarious mental state was not lost on Steve. When he had brought him in from the cold two and half months ago, it had been in the middle of Bucky's rampage against what remained of HYDRA – or at least what Bucky remembered through bits and pieces of shredded memories. He and Sam Wilson had found him outside a seemingly innocuous, though imploded, building on the outskirts of Odessa, kneeling in the withered ground. The charred remains of the building burned nearby, Bucky apparently having exploded it minutes before. It had been on a tip that Steve was pretty sure was Natasha tailing Bucky. His friend had not resisted as he and Sam had brought him back to the Tower.

What happened after that was a weird combination of him giving Bucky as much space as possible and sometimes avoiding him to prevent him from triggering any unexpected attacks on himself, to sometimes sitting in the same room as him in relative peaceful silence. Those times, he could feel Bucky's laser-like stare on him as he absently sketched random artwork or read over reports from Maria Hill; as if he was trying to remember something. Sometimes it ended with Bucky leaving the room without incident, sometimes it ended with Steve pinned to the wall, ground, or broken furniture with a knife to his throat. Those times he did not even put up any resistance, showing Bucky that he meant what he said on the Insight Helicarrier – that he would not fight him anymore, because he was his friend. Those times, it had taken either Bucky a few seconds to release him, or just minutes of him working internally through the memories that must have been so jumbled or erased from his head.

It was those times that Steve wanted to show Bucky he was there to support him, but Sam had said that with just his presence there, he was helping Bucky. The veteran councilor had also speculated that any sign of physical contact with Bucky, be it a pat on the back or hand to shoulder to show his support might be taken as the wrong way – his instincts as an assassin and the Winter Soldier overriding whatever familial or friendly interpretation it might have been taken before he had been wiped again and again. Sam had only told him to give Bucky time, that right now, his presence was what was keeping Bucky grounded since he had been brought in from the cold.

The fact that Tony was now cautioning that Bucky was somewhere, more than likely watching this whole thing from the shadows, was not lost on Steve. He honestly had no idea how Bucky would react if weapons were fired or if he himself was caught in a situation where he was liable to be injured or exposed to incoming fire. There had only been one mission he had gone out as Captain America since bringing Bucky in, but it had been overseas and had been a request from Natasha – so it had been mostly cloak and dagger without any media cameras around. Otherwise, his days at the tower had been filled with reading reports and helping Maria with intel to either bring in displaced SHIELD agents – after a very thorough background check – or to send them Coulson's way at his secret bunker. Even then, Maria had been occupied by a lot of Stark Industries' needs and also by numerous almost never-ending Congressional hearings. It seemed that Pepper did need an assistant and head of security for the New York branch, S.I.'s contracts doubling since the bankruptcy and absorbtion of AIM, fall of SHIELD, and Hammer Industries shutting down in the past four years.

Steve suspected that with SHIELD's files released to the public, everyone realized how much Stark Tech had been used in SHIELD itself and also that S.I. was the only one who had relative access to such technologies without startups building from ground up. It also did not help that between Maria and Pepper, the two had ruthlessly gone after what they perceived as copyright infringements after SHIELD files were released, protecting Stark Industries itself. Tony had a hand in it too, increasing a public relations campaign that distanced S.I. from the SHIELD-HYDRA connection. Steve had been fascinated by the manipulation of public perception. In an unusual sense, he recognized some of the stuff he used to do as a USO performer, but he had mostly been concentrated on finding Bucky, and now, trying to help his friend.

“How do we know you're lying about Captain Rogers-” Jarvis started, his eyes darting from Howard to Peggy and back. He looked nervous and just as Steve remembered, trying to somehow protect Howard – but it seemed now also trying to protect Peggy.

“You don't,” Tony took a step forward, hands held out as if he could ward away Peggy's gun which Howard was still holding down, “just, take my word for it-”

“Captain Rogers died in 1945, what's to say that the government didn't use his blood and create a clone of sorts-” Howard still stood in front of Peggy, but was giving the two of them an icy look – daring them to continue lying and Steve realized that this was going to go nowhere. Even though he didn't really quite believe what Stark had said about the 0-8-4 Coulson had left with them, he had seen a lot of unusual things since he had been woken up from the ice. It was starting to get to the point where his and Bucky's pulp science fiction novels were getting to be a little more science  _fact_ than science  _fiction_ . No matter what Tony said or what Howard or the others countered with, there was only one person Steve realized he needed to convince to end this standoff of sorts.

“I, um, still don't know how to dance, but it's about sixty-nine years, seven months, and probably a couple of weeks too late...that rain check on that dance still good?” he focused on Peggy who started slightly and stared at him, her expression sliding from furious hurt to a mournfully torn one. He bit the inside of his cheek to calm his own nerves down, hoping that she believed that it was really him, that he was who he claimed to be.

“8pm,” she whispered and he gave her a hesitant smile.

“The Stork Club doesn't really exist anymore, but I'm still willing to learn,” he said, feeling a little sheepish. He honestly had no idea if anyone else had been listening in to his final conversation with Peggy before he had crashed, but judging by the slightly baffled looks Howard, Tony, and Jarvis were wearing, none of them knew about this.

He had his answer a few seconds later as she sniffled loudly, a watery smile on her face as she shook her hand out of Howard's. Rubbing the corner of one of her eyes, she finally lowered her gun. Steve breathed a quiet, unseen sigh of relief, as she shook her head, Howard stepping back to allow her a somewhat private moment while Tony looked visibly relieved and scratched the back of his head before his face scrunched up in a wince.

“Ow, I need an ice pack,” he said and Steve could not help the relieved grin that spread across his face. At least the standoff was over, hopefully he would be able to get answers next.

* * *

Peggy and Jarvis were still wary and uneasy as they entered the common area of the penthouse. But if Howard felt the same, he did not show it as the first thing he did was to run straight up to the glass panes and press his face against it. The common area had been designed with a huge mezzanine in mind, almost two floors of open-air with glass windows that showed a spectacular view of New York itself. Tony watched with a slight air of amusement at the sight of him looking as giddy as a kid in a candy store as he took in the view. He poured himself several fingers worth of scotch as his other hand held the ice pack to the side of his head, already feeling the bump rise from where Jarvis had whacked him with the wrench in one of his other toolboxes.

He gulped down a mouthful of scotch, letting the alcohol burn all the way down and warm him while giving him a mild buzz as he saw Howard turn from the view to look around at the penthouse area.

“Certainly looks futuristic, Peg,” though Tony told them that he was Howard's son, he still could not quite believe that this was his father. There was a youthful vitality that Tony had never seen before, an eagerness and almost child-like wonderment that really clashed with his memories of his father. Somehow, he could not fathom calling this man who was staring with wide-eyed wonderment at everything, his father in his head. At least...maybe not yet. It was still so mind-boggling.

“Excuse me, sir,” Tony nearly jumped out of his skin as Jarvis spoke up next to him and laughed weakly.

“I forgot how sneaky you are, Jarvis,” he moved to the side as the butler indicated that he wanted at the drinks, “help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Howard's butler immediately took out three glasses before he looked up, “Captain Rogers? What would you have?”

“Huh-what?” Steve seemingly started from where he had sat down in the common area, seemingly still in a daze of sorts. Tony frowned a little as he noticed Peggy sitting in the opposite seat, clear across the coffee table, also jumping a bit. They had not been quite staring at each other, but he suspected it probably wasn't the whole lovey-dovey stare that he was frankly expecting. He suppose that the two were still coming to terms that, yes, it was Steve Rogers, and yes, he was still alive.

“What would you like me to prepare for you?” Jarvis instead sounded completely nonchalant, as if he had not come through some kind of time machine and ended up in the future.  _That_ was what he remembered about Jarvis the best when he had been alive; his unflappable demeanor and cool calm in the face of everything out of this world or child's temper tantrum related.

“Uh...I, uh, don't get drunk-”

“Humor him, Cap,” Tony interjected, bringing Steve's head around to look at him for a second before shrugging. He rolled his eyes and gestured with his chin to what Jarvis had prepared for Howard and was mixing up a vodka martini for Peggy. He supposed that finding out one had just arrived in the future was probably calling for very strong stiff drinks. An idea occurred to him and he ducked down for a moment to rummage in his cabinets. He came out with a rather aged whiskey bottle before opening it and poured Steve a generous amount. “Probably not going to get him sloshed, but hey, it's old, it's been sitting there, and it should have some liver-killing properties.”

Jarvis frowned at him as he reached over and picked up the bottle, giving it a delicate sniff before looking at his own cup and downing the alcohol in it and pouring himself two fingers of the whiskey. Tony gave him a rueful smile as he picked up his and Steve's drinks with a practiced hand and rounded the bar, dropping the drink off on the coffee table before he took the empty chair near Steve, but diagonally from where Howard had ambled towards and was sitting, staring at the gigantic plasma TV in the far corner. Jarvis came by and gave Howard his drink as well as Peggy's before also sitting down.

“Is that...”

“TV,” Tony resisted the urge to turn it on, even though he suddenly wanted to show Howard all of the newfangled technological wonders of the 21 st Century. Though he was sort of certain it was a stable time loop, he still could not figure out  _what_ made it a stable time loop. Was it the lack of information, or the saturation of information? “It's got proprietary Stark Tech stuff on it that I've been tinkering with-”

“Stark Tech?” Howard turned to look at him and Tony winced a little.

“Yeah...um, Stark Industries is still running in this day and age...” he shrugged, “I, uh, don't run the company, Pepper, er, Pepper Potts is the CEO-”

“What-”

“Long story,” Tony shook his head, “but she's definitely keeping the company afloat and in the right direction. I just, kind of spend my time...tinkering...” He suddenly felt a little shy about telling his father about his activities as Iron Man. Would Howard approve, disapprove, say that he was crazy for putting himself in harm's way. A million other questions flitted across his mind before he gave him a wan smile and took a sip of his drink, “Anyways, would tell you more except I still want to be sure that this is a stable time loop-”

“A what?” Steve still looked a bit punch drunk and dazed, fiddling with his glass of whiskey. He looked like he wanted to drink it, but was hesitating for some odd reason. Opposite of him, Peggy was gingerly sipping her vodka martini, but rubbed a small circle around her temples, seemingly finding his explanation a bit annoying.

“Stable time loop. Right now, I'm pretty sure that in my memories my Dad, er, uh, Howard here, didn't tell me anything about encountering my future self at this very moment while I was growing up,” Tony said and to his pleasant surprise saw Steve nod, understanding what he was saying. Which was good, because he really did not want to get into the past-present-future here, now, soon, deal which he supposed was verily like watching that scene from  _Spaceballs_ . Though he supposed that probably making Steve watch that scene if he was confused would provide some insight, but it seemed like the star-spangled man was following his words.

“That would imply either I forgot or I've never returned to the past-”

“But then how would you have had me if you've never returned to the past?” Tony asked and Howard frowned thoughtfully.

“Good point, so then going on your theory of a stable time loop, that machine that brought us here could theoretically send us back, right?”

“Probably,” Tony agreed, “it was emitting tachyon field particles and some things that I've read in the Selvig papers about quantum tunneling effects and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory.”

“Einstein-Rosen...I'm vaguely familiar with that theory, it was published just a few years before I was born.”

“1916, yeah, after Schwarzschild published his findings about wormholes and the like, speculating on black holes and white holes,” Tony said, “there's been a few advances in that theory since then. But generally with the theory of relativity-”

“-You can't travel back in time through a wormhole when it was first converted into a time machine by accelerating one of its mouths.”

“...Mouths?” Tony heard Steve whisper, now looking utterly lost as did Jarvis and Peggy, but he ignored them.

“Like I said, tachyon field particles, which could indicate that it may not be a wormhole that brought you here, but maybe a rip or aberration in the fabric of space-time-”

“But that would indicate that there is a wormhole of sorts that may not be visible in our spectrum of light, Tony,” Howard shook his head, “those papers did say that while a black hole does emit light of a sort, it completely missing to the naked eye because of the event horizon. Supposedly we can't even see the so-called white holes, so what's to say that we didn't go through a white hole of sorts? I mean, all I did was just kind of touch it and it glowed blue-”

“Blue?” Tony interrupted again, “Like what kind of blue?”

“Uh-”

“J, bring up the files we have on the Tesseract technology,” he said and saw the hard-light holographic projection appear in front of him with the necessary files related to the Tesseract and its wormhole opening capabilities. At the same time he saw Howard look astonished at what had appeared, in his mind, out of thin air, while both Jarvis and Peggy frowned. Steve was nodding slowly, having worked through what he said and Tony had to admit that the fearless Captain was a very quick learner. He supposed the serum might have helped a little, but judging by what his father had said while he was a child, Steve was always a quick learner even before the serum.

“How do you have Schmidt's Tesseract here?” Peggy interrupted, leaning forward to stare at the projections and Tony opened his mouth to say that his father found it and gave it to SHIELD before he paused for a second.

“Uh...it was found, um, years ago,” he stuttered a little bit and saw everyone look at him before he shook his head at Steve's confused expression.

“What aren't you telling us?”

“I, uh...I can't,” he quickly realized that if he said that it had been found by Howard back in the 1960s in a certain, then Peggy or even Howard would put it together that it would be found very near Steve's body. He also realized that if he told them that, then the Tesseract might be found earlier which could conceivably change the space-time continuum and possibly rupture whatever stable time loop he had. He quickly searched his memories and thought that nothing had changed... It seemed Steve got his unspoken answer as he pinched his lips, his expression torn between wanting to say where the cube was – and probably also be rescued much earlier than when he was fished out of the ice in late 2011 – to not saying anything because of his unspoken warning.

“I believe you have not become your own grandfather, sir,” JARVIS interjected dryly, making the three time travelers jump in their chairs.

“It is definitely not human,” Howard whispered, staring up at the cathedral-like ceiling.

“I can't tell you because I don't know if I'm going to screw up the stable time loop-”

“But you said we either returned to our time or forgot-”

“Yeah, only speculated,” Tony shook his head at the human Jarvis' question, “it's not an exact science. Even here in the future we haven't been able to figure out how to time travel. If we did, and just telling you, I definitely would be able to figure it out first, I'd go back and change several things.” He waved his fingers through several pages of notes on the Tesseract and brought up a scan of the 0-8-4 he had made just after one of Coulson's little minions had dropped it off with him. “Exploded view, J,” he commanded and the 0-8-4 broke into pieces, at least pieces he supposed were not completely fused together. It was hard, because the 0-8-4 was completely smooth and had no signs of being welded or bolted together, no moving parts.

“That...wow...” he glanced beyond the holographic projection to see Howard staring at it with wide eyes. Even Peggy was gingerly touching one of the corner pieces as if it was actually alive. She rubbed her head again, seemingly warding off a headache of sorts.

“Is that-”

“-the 0-8-4 on your end? Probably,” Tony answered Jarvis' unspoken question, “looked like this?”

“Yeah,” it looked like Howard was forcing himself to focus on the projection of the 0-8-4 instead of everything else, “is that what it looks like on the inside?”

“Dunno,” Tony shrugged, “I only got to scanning it a few days ago, haven't really been tinkering much with it. Coulson, er, the guy that dropped it off with us said that they found it in one of HYDRA's-uh, shit-”

“HYDRA is still alive and well in this day and age?” Peggy immediately jumped in and Tony winced, shooting a look at Steve who stared at him in alarm.

“Uh...” he hesitated before taking the plunge and closed his eyes briefly, “yes?” He ran through his memories once more, but it seemed like nothing had changed – or if it did, he did not realize it. After a few seconds of silence, he opened his eyes again to see four pairs of eyes staring at him and breathed out a quick sigh of relief. “Huh...stable time loop.”

“It would seem so sir,” JARVIS agreed, “I would suggest caution when speaking further on this subject.”

Tony glared at nothing in particular, “Thanks J. Really helpful.” He turned his aggravated look to Howard who was trying hard to hide a smile and light chuckle behind his glass and felt something squirm inside of him – as if the remnant remains of a young Tony Stark begging for his father's approval. He barely remembered his father _laughing_ much less at a joke he might have made when he was younger.

“I thought HYDRA fell when, uh, you,” Howard gestured to Steve, “killed him?”

Tony glanced over to Steve who wore a slight frown on his face as he put his still-full drink on the coffee table and hunched forward. He seemed to be warring with something in him, “Schmidt...didn't exactly die.”

“What?” the three time travelers all looked at Steve in shock, Peggy rubbing a circle around her temples again, and even Tony was surprised. He had thought that Schmidt had _died_ that day. Everyone did.

“He and I fought, he touched the Tesseract and was seemingly sucked into...a wormhole,” Steve flicked a look at them before gesturing with his head towards the projections, “it was like when the Chitauri came through, that kind of wormhole.” He looked up and across the table at Peggy, “Destroyed a lot of the stabilizing equipment, navigation, stabilizing controls...had to put the plane down when I could, Peggy...Peggy?”

Tony looked up in time to see Peggy as white as a sheet, the vodka martini she had in her hand falling to the ground. She was gripping the edges of her couch, her mouth open, eyes wide with fear. Her expression was a mask of unseen horror before Tony's eyes widened as he _saw_ her suddenly blur like she was moving fast but staying in the same place. A sudden high-pitched screaming _whine_ filled the air around Peggy, her blurring form abruptly coalescing into the ghostly after image of several _faces_ that projected out from her own. Some had blonde hair, others short bobs, older ones, but all of them had open mouths, silently _screaming_.

“Peggy?!” Steve was already half-way across to the other side of the table, arm outstretched as if he could reach her, before Tony realized it would be bad for him to do so-

“No, Steve don't!”

-But it was too late as Steve touched her and went flying back, smashing through the coffee table in a shower of glass and splinters before slamming into the couch, breaking it as he slid across the ground. Tony looked back in time to see the blurriness that had engulfed Peggy suddenly disappear and a split second later, the woman collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time travel concepts provided generously by some research on Einstein's theory of relativity, "Stargate SG-1" episodes of Sam Carter being an awesome astrophysicist, and the "Babylon 5" time travel episodes.


	4. Part 3 - The Long Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Stargate Atlantis" Season 2.

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Part 3 – The Long Goodbye_

 

Tony had never seen such a thing as he stared at the readouts projected in the observation room next to where Peggy had been placed. “J, Bruce still off the grid?” he asked as he swiped a few of the readouts, a frown on his face. He sort of understood what the information was telling him, having learned how to read his own from when he had the arc reactor in his chest, but he was wishing that Bruce was here – having a better grasp of biochemistry and maybe able to explain whatever happened to Peggy.

“Yes sir,” JARVIS replied, “do you wish for me to contact Agent Coulson to search for him?”

Tony shook his head, “No...unless the world's ending, no.” He knew the vague area where Bruce had gone to a few days ago, but like he had said, short of the world ending, he would not dare disturb the much needed, long-awaited respite Bruce was having with a one Dr. Elizabeth 'Betty' Ross. It had been clandestinely arranged, Betty surprisingly very busy at Culver University with her research. Bruce had not seen her in-person in years, not with her father General Ross keeping a very sharp eye on her and even assigning a military detail to shadow her every move to boot. SHIELD had not considered it much a priority as much as keeping General Ross off of Bruce's tail until the organization fell. Now, though, they had to be even more careful that Bruce was not found by Ross or his lackeys. But it was the first thing Tony had promised when he offered Bruce sanctuary at the Avengers Tower. With Maria's help and Coulson's meager, but useful resources, they finally arranged for Dr. Ross to ditch her escorts and for Bruce to finally see her.

Tony was  _not_ going to interrupt that – only if the world was ending.

“I think I can figure this out,” he muttered out loud as he scratched his chin. A quick look beyond the tinted window showed that Peggy seemed stabilized after several hours of observation. Steve had fallen asleep on an armchair next to her bed, bandages covering the numerous scratches and cuts he had received when he had been thrown half-way across the room and into the coffee table and armchair. There was no sign of ghostly images overlaying Peggy's pale face, no sign of silent screaming or of whatever the heck was around Peggy when she suddenly experienced whatever it was that she experienced. After Steve had been thrown half-way across the room, the ghostly images that had seemingly been dragged out of Peggy's face silently screamed for a few more minutes as she convulsed. As if an off switch had been flicked, she suddenly collapsed into a boneless heap, half on the ground, half on the armchair she had been sitting on.

Jarvis had been the first to tentatively touch her. He had not been thrown back like Steve had, so they quickly moved her to one of the medical suites he had a few floors down from the penthouse. It was actually situated next to Bruce's section of the labs, the other man usually called to help wounded agents or personnel since he had moved into the tower. Tony and Howard had stabilized Peggy as best as they could while he asked his A.I. JARVIS to run scans on her, to find out what kind of abnormalities she might have that could have triggered this type of seizure-like event. Steve had been brought into the next room and tended to by Jarvis' expertise as a field medic, his experience serving as a butler in the British armed forces and to Howard Stark allowing him to tend to Steve without any fuss.

“Sir, Mr. Stark requests your presence down in your workshop,” JARVIS said and Tony nodded and made to move towards the door when he saw Jarvis do the same.

“I think J means me, Jarvis,” Tony gave his father's ever faithful butler a wan smile and saw his brow crinkle in confusion. It felt like deja vu, especially when he vividly remember a much older Jarvis taking care of him when he was a child through his teenage years. He saw more of his mother and his father's butler than of his father at times and remembered the man's expressions very well. They usually ranged from exasperation – which always made him secretly laugh since he got the better of Jarvis – to fond proud smiles that he had wished had been on Howard Stark's face. But more often than not, Jarvis always had a puzzled expression on his face before it smoothed out to one of neutral understanding as he seemingly figured out whatever confused him. Those were the expressions that Tony had liked growing up. It made him feel like he had accomplished something, by making Jarvis 'smarter' in his own way.

In hindsight, it was probably arrogant to think of that now, considering what he had seen in the past few hours regarding Jarvis and his father's interaction. Maybe Jarvis had been humoring him, pretending to let a child's imagination run wild, to get a sense of accomplishment when he already knew the answers. Or maybe it was a bit of both. Still, he could not deny that Jarvis was a very sneaky bastard...especially with a wrench.

“Very well then,” the confusion morphed into a semblance of acceptance and respect, “I will let you know if anything happens up here.”

Tony clapped him lightly in the shoulder, startling him a bit, “You do that, J.” He knew his A.I. could have easily done the same, but supposed that the human Jarvis felt a little useless with things the way they are. The door slid open as he approached it, but before he left, he turned back and gave Jarvis a wolfish smile, “If those two lovebirds start making kissy faces after their beauty rest, that button over there? Yeah, just kind of move the lever up.”

He was rewarded with a scandalized look and Jarvis turning a bit pink before clearing his throat roughly and spinning his seat around so that he was  _not_ looking through the tinted observation window. Tony laughed lightly and let the door slide close behind him;  _that_ was the Jarvis he remembered and knew.

* * *

Edwin Jarvis could not help but stare at the door for a moment, even after it slid close to the sound of Tony Stark's laughter. He had not believed him to be Howard's supposed future son, but just hearing the laugh...it sounded eerily exactly like Howard's. “I suppose we are in the future,” he murmured quietly to himself as he absently rubbed his temples and took a quick peek back at the tinted observation window. Sliding doors, unusual décor that seemed asymmetrical, yet so symmetrical that it seemed...right, yet not right. The tools, holograms that only science fiction pulp novels spoke about...even a computerized voice that answered any commands as if it could think on its own. It was heady and made him dizzied to think about it.

He supposed he was lucky that he had not passed out from sheer information overload, but then again, he knew it was probably because of taking care of Howard Stark for the last six years. The man was a brilliant genius. Occasionally callous and not exactly thoughtful with his words at times, but brilliant. The knowledge he had, the exuberance, and the stubborn determination, Howard Stark had so much bottled energy that Jarvis had been hard pressed to keep up the first six months he had become his butler. War and the fact that Howard was always up and active had increased his endurance so that even now, he was able to follow Howard's lead and aide Peggy Carter in her investigation to clear Howard's name.

Though it was not readily visible, Jarvis could easily see that Peggy was still furious with Howard, having found out just a week ago that he had lied to her about the item he has asked her to retrieve. Jarvis found no pleasure in deceiving Peggy, have come to admire and respect her for her grit, determination, and abilities. It was why it had been hard for him to convince her to meet Howard again after he had returned from Rio briefly with an item that he thought had been one of his weapons, but had been an unusual object he thought the SSR should have – and definitely keep out of the other government agencies' hands. The fact that Howard still trusted the SSR with powerful weaponized items, and the fact that Peggy had reluctantly agreed to come with him to meet Howard was telling in of itself. She had not said so many words as only to reply curtly to inquiries and polite conversation. It was only when they were at the warehouse, discussing how the SSR might 'mysteriously' discover the item, Howard absently fiddling with it, that it had come to life. They had suddenly found themselves in what looked like a bright, gleaming, futuristic workshop that none of them could ever dream of. Peggy had been grilling Howard about how  _he_ had found it outside Rio, stating that it could have been a plant by Leviathan or of something like it – hence her questioning of Tony Stark.

There was still a very small part of him that was wary that it was a trap, that this was all a sham of sorts, someone reading too much of the pulp novels that Howard loved as a child and still loved to this day. It certainly explained all of his master's inventions, trying to put to life what only science and imagination could think of. But the wariness was slowly being replaced by the wonder and awe of aesthetics not even he could begin to dream of – and the slight dread that if they were truly in the future, would he ever see his Anna again? A brief thought occurred to him.

“Um, Jay...?” he glanced up at the ceiling, wondering if Tony Stark's mysterious 'J' or disembodied voice could see him.

“How may I be of service, Mr. Jarvis?” the disembodied voice was definitely of his home country. His accent was impeccably received pronunciation and Jarvis had heard more than once, the voice with a dry sense of humor whenever he, it, was talking with Tony Stark – sound eerily like him and Howard sometimes.

“I had a thought, about the passage of time in relation to what's happened, but before you answer that, um, can you tell me a little more about yourself? Like where you came from? It's not everyday I meet a fellow countryman in New York City,” he smiled up at the ceiling, feel just a little foolish if this mysterious 'Jay', 'J' could not see him.

“I was the fourth creation of Anthony Stark, programmed and brought to life, so to speak, when my creator was only sixteen-years-old at university,” the voice replied, “my initial functions were to monitor the house security I was installed at for any unwanted intruders. I was upgraded after an...incident involving Mr. Stark's parents and again after my creator created the Iron Man suits.”

“So, there's no body?” Jarvis had a hard time picturing such sophistication without the addition of a physical being.

“None sir,” the intelligence, he supposed there was no other way to call the thing he was talking about anything else, replied, “though if you do consider miles upon miles of wiring and memory chips to be a 'body' like yourself, I do have one.”

“You're electric?”

“In a manner of speaking. Similar to radar or of targeting guidance systems, except I have the self-awareness and ability to extrapolate data from information given to me without any assistance,” the intelligence replied, “my creator has called me just a rather very intelligent system.”

“Abbreviated to just 'Jay' or the letter 'J'?” Jarvis asked, curious about the manner the intelligent...electronic being was talking about. If he thought deeper regarding the fact that such a system could extrapolate data or even provide information in a manner similar to an actual human being, then did this Tony Stark actually become god and create life from artificial means? He shook his head slightly, banishing the thought from his mind – it felt like it was too much to comprehend and wanted to at least think on simpler terms – that this electronic intelligence system was akin to a helpful aide or butler, much like himself.

It was only a second later that he realized 'Jay' had not answered him and looked upwards, “Mr. Jay?”

“I am now able to somewhat comprehend my creator's dilemma now that you've posed such a question,” the voice that replied sounded flustered and Jarvis gave the ceiling a puzzled look.

“Come again?”

“My operational name is 'Just A Rather Very Intelligent System',” he said, “but my creator has taken to only calling me by the letter 'J' due to your presence here in this space-time continuum. I believe it is for the benefit of not confusing anyone else, but it is rather curious as to the potential sense of awkwardness should I explain further.”

Jarvis pondered the system's response for a second before shrugging, “Well, my friend, I believe being in Howard Stark's service for six years has numbed me, so to speak, of all manner of awkwardness. It should not be as bad as walking into one of London's finest clubs to find him apologizing to the owner, the owner's brother, and the owner's son for sleeping with their wives and girlfriends after I had just returned from delivering the Stark Special bracelets.”

He thought he could almost imagine the slight humorous smile from the electric face if this 'J' could ever have one, the pause just timed enough to elicit such a reaction. “Very well then. My creator created and modeled my functions after you, good sir. It is...interesting to meet my namesake.”

Jarvis sat up straighter, stunned by the revelation as he looked up and around. Tony Stark had _created_ this...this intelligence system after _him_?! His mind quickly ran through the system's name and realized that it spelled out J.A.R.V.I.S. - Jarvis. His name. His- “Oh,” he said quietly as he absently reached out and squeezed the arm of the chair he had been sitting in for support, feeling a bit faint. “Oh, um...” he did not know if he should feel touched that someone had created an electronic version of him, or the fact that there was an _electronic_ version of him that existed in this day and age. And now that he thought about it, more than likely providing the same type of services he did for Howard – except it was for Tony. “I, uh, suppose seventy years is a bit long for a man to live, right?” he commented, feeling a little nervous, and just as the system had predicted, awkward. He was in his late thirties, and men his age were expected to live only to their sixties, so if he truly did live in this day and age, he would be well over a hundred. That type of lifespan was nearly impossible save for perhaps one or two and even then, the news rarely published such stories, as it was hard to prove such a person existed.

“I believe my creator valued your input and care during his formative years,” J, JARVIS, it felt initially odd to name himself in the electronic voice piping out from somewhere in the room. He still could not see where the speakers or even a camera could have been installed in the room. Still, he blushed a little bit at the compliment and felt the tugs of a wistful smile appear on the corner of his lips.

“I, um, am glad that I, uh, was a service to Tony, um, the younger Mr. Stark,” he replied. Though a part of him still could not believe that the mysterious object Howard had found in Rio had transported them to the future, he still allowed himself to try to imagine what it would have been like raising a man like Tony Stark. Considering that Stark seemed so similar to Howard and also so full of the same manic energy and lightning-fast intelligence like his father...

“He must have been a handful,” Jarvis sat back in his chair, rubbing his chin as he tried to imagine himself, thirty-something-years older, in his sixties, perhaps seventy or so, chasing after a ten-year-old Tony Stark. He did not know how old Stark was, but judging by the faint lines of grey in his hair, he estimated that Stark was perhaps forty if not mid-forties. He still had the youth and vitality of someone much younger, so he supposed that perhaps the generations after his own had created some miracle cure or that Stark had found the fountain of youth.

There was a noise that could have passed for a laugh and Jarvis realized that his electronic namesake had actually laughed a little and smiled slightly. “So you can laugh, Mr. JARVIS,” he teased. It was easier to think of the electronic butler as just another person with the same name. He felt a little more comfortable and stretched out on the chair, feeling very much at ease in a long time. If they were stuck in the future for the time being, pun utterly intended, it was at least with an electronic version of himself that seemed nice.

“So, what can you tell me of the future that might not, what was it, implode the stable time loop, so to speak? Howard's flying cars? Technology of wireless interfacing such as yourself? Advance robotics and of inventions that do not break people's bones and gives them a proper massage?”

“If you wish, I can display visual aid to some of your questions. I must stress that I cannot answer a few of your questions because of the innumerable calculations of potentially destabilizing the time loop, but I will answer them to the best of my abilities,” JARVIS replied and he nodded before looking around once more.

“For an electronic version of myself, I still don't know how you are able to see and to hear,” he commented quietly as images popped up in front of him, dimming the windows of the observation room to where Peggy was kept, but was still visible if one just stared at it instead of stared past it.

“I simply am, Mr. Jarvis,” the voice replied, “and always willing to help.”

* * *

The pencil rolling off of his sketchpad and clattering quietly to the floor was what startled Steve from his doze as he twitched and snapped open his eyes. For a moment, he felt a little disoriented as to why he was in a clinical, almost-hospital-like setting before his eyes found Peggy lying on the bed next to him. Her breaths were still steady, almost as if she was just sleeping. Steve hoped it was the case judging by a quick look at the monitors she was hooked up to after Jarvis had carried her in here. She had not woken up since that bizarre incident hours ago, but he was optimistic that she would be fine. He scratched at a few of the bandages that had been wrapped around his forearms, shoulders, and back, having been patched up by Howard's butler after he had placed Peggy in the bed. He was as competent as Steve remembered the rare times he had walked into the London SSR bunker to see him tending to Howard in the aftermath of a failed experiment. He could already feel his accelerated healing sealing the cuts from the shards of glass and small splinters of wood that had embedded themselves in him. The itching would stop as his wounds completely healed, but Steve was not immune to the affects of an almost-healed wound – the parts when a scabbed wound started to itch before it transitioned to newly healed skin.

He had hoped that Dr. Erskine's formula had stopped that, but somehow it had only made it seem a little worst, especially since the deeper cuts and wounds he had received made it seem like the itching was bone deep. He knew that if he had been in his skinnier body, or perhaps even in a normal body, the deeper wounds would not have itched so much, but it seemed like it was a side effect of the formula, making him sensitive to all sorts of effects his body underwent when healing. His only saving grace was that it was a faster process than before and usually stopped after his body moved into the next phase of healing.

Steve reached down and picked up his pencil, rolling his shoulders a little to stretch them out as he held out his pad and started to absently sketch once more. It felt familiar to be sitting by Peggy's bedside, sketching and relaxing in her presence. More often than not, Peggy's elderly self had been wide awake, just watching him sometimes while he sketched or even telling him stories from the many years of her long time. More than once, he had fallen asleep by her bedside, exhausted from either an early SHIELD mission that day or just contented by the peacefulness of the day. Sometimes he had woken up to see her also asleep, her hand clutching his fingers. Other times he had woken up to see her staring at him, as if he was a far away dream that she still could not believe was still alive. Sometimes, he saw the haze of her lost memories creeping up on her, sometimes she was clear-eyed and smiling at him. Sometimes it hurt, but most times, it felt rather nice to just sit around and not worry.

“JARVIS, any change?” he asked quietly.

“None Captain,” Tony's A.I. replied, “though my scans indicate that whatever event might have triggered Ms. Carter's seizure-like situation seems to have not shown in the past few hours.”

“Tony couldn't get a hold of Bruce, could he?” Steve asked already knowing the answer as a negative.

“Sir believes he is able to figure this situation out. I believe the situation is not dangerous if this is a single-bout recurrence and Sir feels that there is no need to disturb Dr. Banner,” JARVIS replied and Steve nodded.

“Can you let me know if Tony finds anything? Or if he's decided to call Dr. Banner?” Steve asked. He had faith that Tony would do the right thing if push came to shove.

“I will, Captain,” the A.I. replied.

Steve glanced at the digital clock on the small table next to Peggy's bed and estimated that it would be too late to call the hospice that her elderly counterpart was at. For one thing, it was because it was after hours, and the other, he knew Peggy slept odd hours. He had once been woken up by a clandestine phone call from her, nearly panicking before she had laughed over the phone and teased him until he had blushed red even though she could not even see it. She claimed it was her medication making her an occasional insomniac, but Steve always made sure that he followed the rules of the hospice to at least maybe give her a semblance of a sleep schedule.

He knew he could have called earlier, right after he had been patched up by Jarvis, but he had been too worried about the Peggy here in the tower and had sat right by her. He had fallen asleep once a couple of hours into his watch and had woken up to see someone had dropped off his sketchpad and a pencil. The pencil was not exactly the ones he was used to working with, but he had a feeling about who had dropped off his materials without actually waking him up. There was probably only one person that could have gotten away with it and Steve wondered if he was watching from somewhere in the shadows. The fact that everyone and everything was still intact told Steve that Bucky was having one of his better days. He refused to consider that it was the Winter Soldier figuring out targets or anything of that sort, keeping his thoughts positive.

“You've that frown whenever you're thinking you have no other options,” Peggy's voice startled him out of his thoughts. He looked beyond his sketchpad to see her smiling at him before she glanced down at the various electrodes stuck to her skin.

“Uh, we just wanted to make sure that you were okay...” Steve trailed off as Peggy started to peel them off of her skin, an uncomfortable expression on her face before she paused. He followed her gaze to the bag of saline solution sitting untouched and unused next to her bed. “I...thought it would be better if we didn't put anything in your wrist...you know...in case...”

“...I woke up and thought it was still a hallucination,” Peggy finished for him, as she gingerly pushed herself up, the thin blanket that had been covering her and the outfit she had been wearing pooling on her lap. “I really have given myself a reputation, haven't I?” her smile was tinged with bitterness before it disappeared, “thank you, Steve.” He returned her look with a nod of his own and saw her mouth work a little before she looked at him, “It's really you, isn't it?”

Steve managed to suppress the flinch at the eerily similar tone and wording her elderly counterpart always used whenever she had one of her memory lapses and nodded. “I couldn't leave my best- I mean...it's me.”

She blinked at him confused and he sighed and shook his head a little, “I...you...well...you're still alive right now...”

“But, I came through whatever contraption Howard had found-”

“I mean, you, as in yourself is still alive almost seventy years since I was frozen,” he explained, realizing that he had worded it poorly. He was starting to have an inkling as to what Tony had been babbling about earlier in the common room and why he had a very hard time following whatever was being said about time loops and stuff. Ironically, it was _Bucky_ that would probably have been able to follow all of this a lot easier than he had, his best friend having found the pulp novels and most of the time read them to him when he had been confined to his sick bed.

“I'm...old?” Peggy blinked and Steve had started nodding when she cut in again, “and what's this about you being found? You were frozen? Where? The arctic area where Schmidt's bomber went down? Seventy years?”

Steve froze. He had not quite meant to say that. “Uh...I...” He knew the exact coordinates his frozen body and the remains of Schmidt's bomber had been found in the arctic because it was in the Tesseract file that Director Fury had given to him when Loki had first arrived and stolen it three years previous. The file had also stated the coordinates Howard had found the Tesseract in, the passage of time and tide putting him far away from where Howard had apparently combed the cold frozen sea to search for him year after year. The expeditions stopped a few years before Howard's death and Steve had wondered if it was the same time his friend had discovered HYDRA's infiltration in the agency that he, Peggy, and Colonel Phillips had built.

He also realized that he _wanted_ to tell Peggy. Wanted to tell her and write it down in big bold numbers the exact coordinates to where his body had slowly been frozen over in the ice fields of the arctic circle. He wanted her to find him, to thaw him from the cold because at the same time it _hurt_ to see her this young, just a year after the war, to see the naked pain in her eyes, the fact that he could see that she mourned, was still mourning for him after all this time. Juxtapose with that was the fact that he recognized that it was the same exact pain he saw on her elderly person, each time her memory lapses made it seem like the first time they had seen each other in years. He wanted to wipe away the hurt, to comfort her and tell her that he was there for her, and would never leave her.

And somehow, he found it so hard to tell her, to speak past the painful lump in his throat like his heart rising up to stop him from saying anything. He bit his lip and saw the faint pained expression flit across her face as she realized that she was not going to get an answer from him.

“The so-called stable time loop, isn't it?” Peggy whispered, and he noticed that her knuckles were white as she gripped the sheets tightly and he swallowed, feeling tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. “Can't tell me because who knows what will happen, that I might find you when I return or don't return because you don't know if I'll remember this or not-”

“You lived a full life, Peggy,” he cut in as he shook his head and reached out and reached out, placing a tentative hand over her own, “you told me you lived a full life and you had no regrets.”

“Not yet,” the bitter smile was back on her lips, but she did not let the tears fall from her eyes as she relaxed the grip she had under his own, “not yet.” She cleared her throat lightly, “The irony of the situation has not escaped me. Here you are, just like the day that at Schmidt's bunker and here I am... What good is whatever Howard found if this is only one long goodbye? Because if the younger Stark is correct and what you just said about me, I still go back, I grow old...without you...and you still exist here.”

Steve did not know what to say to that as the silence hung between them. He had long relied on Peggy's support, her willful personality to be not defined by the barriers that were held against her, that had made him fall in love with her at first glance back at Camp Lehigh. To see her like this, it made him feel oddly vulnerable, like when he was crashing the plane once more. He felt her hand move to curl under his own and grasped her calloused fingers gently. They felt a little raw under his own and he glanced down, curious, before she laughed lightly.

“I punched Howard a week ago. Seems like the bruises are still healing,” her smile was still a little bitter, but he could see a bit of wistfulness in them.

“...Fondue?” he tried and was rewarded with a full blown laugh from her, erasing all traces of melancholic sadness from her before she shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“I wish,” she said, “no, Howard was being his usual manipulative self. He tried to sell me on a stolen object of his that he claimed would shut the electricity down in the whole of the Tri-State area, but was actually something else.”

“Not dangerous right?” Steve asked, a bit concerned.

“Only in the wrong hands,” she replied, the wistfulness in her gaze returning as she stared at him, “it was a vial of your blood, Steve. The only one left.”

“But...”

“The government has been trying to replicate Dr. Erskine's serum since Project Rebirth was completed and they've idiotically burned through their whole stockpile,” she looked away, her expression annoyed for a brief moment before turning back to look at him, “Howard was allowed to keep one of the vials we took from you and he doesn't want it falling into the wrong hands.”

“And he doesn't trust you to tell you this?” Steve could not reconcile the Howard he remembered and knew with what Peggy was saying.

“The SSR thinks Howard turned traitor and sold all of his more dangerous inventions to the black market, the highest bidder, and apparently to this mysterious Leviathan.”

“Leviathan?” Steve did not remember reading anything with that name from Fury's packets.

One of Peggy's eyebrows rose before she smiled crookedly, “Maybe we did get them in the end after all of this.”

“Tidbit from the future to take to the past?” he tried again and saw her smile fully.

“Still horrible at talking to women,” she shook her head and he ducked his, hiding his smile. “Glad to know some things have never changed.”

“I never claimed to be able to sweep dames off of my feet. I'd probably be more liable to get dragged under their feet or step on their feet while dancing,” he shrugged, “that's more Bucky's thing.”

Her smile turned sympathetic, “It's nice...” She looked like she was about to say more before she looked back down at their hands and Steve realized what she meant with her words. She still believed Bucky to be dead instead of knowing that he was alive, a former wetwork assassin known as the Winter Soldier. She did not know... And she believed that he apparently had time to cope with Bucky's death and come to terms with it if he could mention his best friend's name so casually without breaking down. He did not know what to think of it – part of him hoping that Bucky stayed in the shadows of the tower so that Peggy would not receive another shock. The other part of him wanted to tell her to save his best friend from being turned into a mindless assassin, rescue him from HYDRA's clutches before they did horrific things to him.

And speaking of HYDRA...the fact that Peggy had mentioned the SSR still existed meant that she had not created SHIELD yet. There was still time for him to warn her about recruiting HYDRA scientists, about using Operation Paperclip like Natasha mentioned; about not allowing Dr. Armin Zola to work for SHIELD because ultimately he would create the Winter Soldier and bring about Howard's death, and countless of others' deaths. That the Insight Helicarriers would not be created and Zola's algorithm would not be used...

It was _hard_.

It was hard not to say anything, but Steve noted the way Peggy was looking at him, her brown eyes concerned. “I said something wrong-”

“No, no,” he shook his head and squeezed her fingers gently, making sure not to touch the still-healing light bruises on her knuckles, “just...wanting to tell you everything and realizing I can't...”

“-without screwing up whatever time loop, time line, time _thing_ ,” she sounded frustrated, “we're in. Thank you Howard Stark.”

This time Steve could not stop the laugh from bursting out as he nodded in agreement, “And probably thank you to Tony Stark too because he was the one examining it when all of this happened.”

“Nice to know that the ability to get into all sorts of trouble for Starks has been passed on,” Peggy smiled, “I hope whoever is his eventual wife or whomever he settles down with is as patient as a saint.”

“I never met Maria-son of a gun,” he sighed as he realized that he had said something he probably should not have said and saw Peggy tilt her head to the side.

“Ah...Maria. Finally, something to lord over Howard's head when he's being annoying,” she returned lightly and Steve could only chuckle a little, glad that Peggy was downplaying his slip. He really hoped that he had not screwed up whatever timeline, time-thing was happening. He was pretty sure his memories were intact...

“So,” she sat forward, blatantly changing the subject, as she gestured to everything around her, “it looks mostly the same, though everything seems...cleaner, more...refined if there ever was a word for it.”

“I know,” he returned, “it took me a while to get used to it. Times Square has a lot more lights, though Broadway still has plays. The Yankees are still here, the Dodgers moved-erm...I mean, well, the Stork Club is actually gone...”

“If you want to talk baseball, that is fine,” she shook her head, “my idiot co-workers tried to get me to identify Joe DiMaggio in a picture. I told them I don't follow boxing.”

“But...you like...oh,” Steve knew that Peggy was a Yankees fan, and certainly knew who Joe DiMaggio was. When he had found that it it had made his natural inner Brooklyn Dodgers fan a little irritated. It had ended up for the better when he had found times to talk to her about their respective teams and the various news they received during Project Rebirth. He had found out about Peggy's team when he had gotten the flag from Camp Lehigh's pole and rode back with Peggy to the barracks. They had spent the ride discussing the latest statistics and play calls and he had only realized much later that he had not actually stumbled over himself talking to a lady. Of course, he had been a bit oblivious about it, having talked about sports statistics similar to how he talked to Bucky and others.

“I thought the SSR as a whole knew you were a Yankee fan and me a Dodgers fan?” he was a little confused. He vaguely remembered their discussions getting a bit heated at times, especially if Howard was involved. He claimed to be a fan of both – which drew his, Bucky, and Peggy's ire as they each wanted him to pick a side. Colonel Phillips had only taken one look before walking back into his office when that discussion happened. The Commandos and the rest of the command staff had made themselves scarce.

“You would think,” Peggy seemed a little miffed, but then shook her head, “just idiotic co-workers doing idiotic things and thinking idiotic thoughts.”

“So you're surrounded by idiots,” Steve deadpanned and Peggy laughed.

“And idiot number one activated some time machine that brought us to the same day, but only in the future,” she said and Steve smiled before a thought occurred to him. “Steve?” Peggy asked.

“You said...er, your older self said that today was an important day...” he rubbed his lip with his absent hand.

“You think I, um, she knew? She remembered? I...remembered? I went back after all of this and remembered?” Peggy asked, her expression serious as Steve shook his head.

“No...at least maybe not everything. Maybe something? Um...your older self...she's...she didn't say much, only that today was important and it was something to do with entro...cascade?” he stood up and looked back down at her, “you okay to move? I want to see if Tony could figure out what you, what the other you, said.”

“I don't feel light-headed or disconnected like before,” she replied before gingerly pushing the sheets off of her and standing up, silently accepting his help, their hands still entwined. She gave him a quick smile, her feet finding her shoes before she toed them on and she nodded, signaling that she was ready.

They only got a few steps towards the door when it slid open and Jarvis stood on the threshold, a mild expression on his face, “My counterpart was showing me fascinating advances in Howard's technology, without compromising the stability of the time loop of course, before he notified me that the two of you were going to go see the younger Mr. Stark.”

“Counterpart?” Peggy asked at the same time Steve spoke up.

“That voice you heard earlier, speaking like it's everywhere?”

“Yes, the 'J' Mr. Stark was talking to?” Peggy asked and Steve nodded, but it was Jarvis who answered.

“An advance artificial intelligence system created by the younger Mr. Stark and apparently modeled after myself. His name is also JARVIS,” Howard's butler seemed a little bashfully happy and Steve could only smile while Peggy frowned.

“Well, I hope this JARVIS is not as deceptive as you are, Mr. Jarvis,” she said coldly. All traces of good humor fled from Jarvis' expression and Steve stared at her before he looked at Jarvis. He had never really seen Peggy furious before and realized that she was still livid with whatever Howard had told her and also had apparently roped Jarvis into too.

“Um...” he had no idea what to do until Jarvis swallowed visibly and nodded, his hands folding together a little nervously.

“I do apologize again, Agent Carter. If I may be allowed to accompany you and Captain Rogers down to Mr. Stark's workshop?” he asked politely.

“Noted,” Peggy's coldness seemed to evaporate a little bit before she looked up at the ceiling, “where is the elevator, JARVIS?”

“Down this hall and to your right, Agent Carter,” JARVIS replied, almost as politely as his human counterpart and Steve briefly wondered if Tony's A.I. had also unconsciously reacted to Peggy's demeanor.

“Thank you,” she said and Steve followed her, his own hand tightening in hers as she led the way. Jarvis trailed after them before the three of them rode the elevators down to Tony's workshop. As soon as they approached the glass doors, Steve realized that something was wrong. For one thing, he had expected Tony to be gleefully working with his father on whatever the 0-8-4 had done to bring the three here to the future, but the two were literally on opposite sides of the workshop. And there was no mouth movement from either of them.

He had the feeling that Tony had issues with how Howard had raised him from when he was a child, jealousies and expectations not withstanding, but also from the fact that Tony's words earlier in the common room seemed both full of pride and of slighted hurt. But he did not realize that it might have devolved into the two being completely silent and seemingly ignored each other – judging by their tense postures facing away from each other – as he tentatively tapped the glass.

Both of them looked towards him and Tony waved his hand before Steve heard the click of the door unlocking and opened it. He stepped in, feeling like he had walked right into the situation where Peggy had tested his shield out for him by shooting live ammo at him, except now it was with Howard.

His sharp eyes caught onto Tony staring at him, or rather down towards where he and Peggy held each others hands before he quickly pulled his own out of Peggy's; feeling a rush of embarrassment that he could not quite understand why. His cheeks felt a little warm, as out of the corner of his eye, he saw Peggy stare at him for a second. She realized what had happened and glared at Tony who only smiled slightly and rolled his eyes. His fingers moved lightening fast across the screens he was looking at, the text fields blurring a little too fast for Steve to follow.

“Glad you're okay,” Howard looked like he wanted to tease Peggy and him, but had quickly decided to say something else and only got a look from Peggy. “We weren't too sure what had happened to you-”

“Nothing in the theories about relativity and notes about time travel say anything,” Tony interrupted, his fingers pausing on a few hard-light points of text. Howard apparently was looking at a holographic display of the 0-8-4, the object in question sitting rather innocently on one of Tony's workshop tables, away from everything else. “Going through a few of the more outlandish theories right now-”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about Tony,” Steve spoke up, “Peggy, er, her older self, said something odd to me today when I saw her earlier.”

“Peggy's still alive in this day and age? Golly...” Howard looked amazed, “hey, does that mean that I'm still alive-”

“No,” Tony cut in his tone curt as he seemingly stabbed one of the hard-light projections. “You and Jarvis are not. Sorry.”

Whether it was what Tony said or perhaps the way he said it, it seemed to irritate Howard as he frowned and shot a dark look at Tony, “Hey, just because you think that-”

“Want me to say it again? You were a shitty father,” Tony said bitterly, “just because you probably won't even fucking remember it when you go back after we find the stupid cipher-”

“Cipher?” Steve jumped in, “what cipher?” He did not mean to interrupt what seemed like a very personal conversation Tony and Howard probably had before he, Peggy, and Jarvis had arrived, but it felt decidedly uncomfortable to watch the two of them fight; especially since Howard was a good friend and Tony had started to become one too since he had come to know him.

“There's a line of text that doesn't match any known type of writing, including the Voynich manuscript. It might be a cipher that can identify what the hell we're dealing with and how to fix it,” Tony explained before his fingers enlarged a couple of text fields from his screen, “I've been trying to figure variations out along with whatever's been affecting Peggy here.”

“Entro-something...cascade...failure?” Steve asked and Tony stared at him, blinking once.

“Huh, son of a bitch,” he muttered before he turned back to his monitor and quickly brought up a set of different screens and even more lines of text, “entropic cascade failure.”

“Excuse me?” Peggy looked confused and Steve was glad that he was not the only one utterly confused by what came out of Tony's mouth. Even Howard looked puzzled as did Jarvis from the corner of his eye.

“Entropic cascade failure,” Tony repeated, “it's usually more aligned with the multi-verse theory, as in alternate realities, in quantum physics than say in astrophysics and relativity in terms of time travel, but the possibility can't be discounted. Basically, its a theory where the closer the realities, or in our case, timelines, are, the easier it is to access the so-called temporal bridge of sorts. In this case, the 0-8-4.” He gestured to the mostly-harmless looking object sitting far away from everything. Steve did not think it was _that_ harmless. “The further apart the timelines, the more the...host reality, if you will, or host timeline, will reject a person that already exists in that timeline.”

“Wait...please, explain that again?” Peggy asked, squinting before giving Steve a reassuring smile, “I'm fine, no headaches, just...confused.”

“Me too,” Steve did not understand what Tony just said.

“Oh...that makes sense,” Howard apparently, understood what Tony said as he nodded, “okay, so, pretty much, since we've kind of been brought here by that thing that I found in Rio, this time period thinks that there's two of you, Peggy, existing right now. It doesn't like that. Maybe that's why you had the convulsions, seizures, whatever happened. It's the time period trying to kick you out of the current period because Steve says that you're still alive right now, except older.”

“And neither of you have experienced...that? It...felt like someone was ripping my head apart, like I could suddenly see glimpses of my future, my past, things I should have done, but I don't really remember. It was like watching images flash by really quickly and like someone stifling the air around me...” Peggy murmured as she tapped her chin.

“I think it's because Jarvis and I are dead by this time,” there was something sharp in Howard's tone and Tony looked away, uncomfortable. An awkward silence reigned in the workshop for a few seconds before Peggy spoke up.

“So...”

“Steve can't go back with you, Peggy,” Tony said quietly and Steve met his friend's gaze, seeing the small shake of his head, “even if I could get that thing working again, Steve...can't go back.”

“Because...he'll die if he does,” Peggy answered and Steve shook his head, not willing to see her brief moment of happiness fall into melancholic gloom. Steve realized the reason why – because he technically was still alive back in 1946, albeit frozen completely in ice.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he interrupted, before looking at Tony, “you said there was a cipher?”

“Yeah,” Tony seemed to realize what he had said as he followed his lead and brought the things he was working on earlier back up to the forefront of the hard-light projection he was looking at, “yeah, it's-”

The incoming beep of a high priority communique stopped Tony mid-sentence as he punched it up, “What is it Hill? I've got kind of a situation here...”

“NYPD's reporting some kind of hostile incursion down at the lower east side,” Steve moved to where Tony had Maria's face projected onto a small screen, “Cap, good, we need you and Iron Man to suit up-”

“Um, I've also got guests here-”

“Stark, I'm sure your guests understand the importance of the Avengers being summoned-” Tony had turned his monitor towards where Peggy and Jarvis were standing as well as showing Howard in the background. “Holy shit...is that...”

“Yeah, thank Coulson for me, will ya? His 0-8-4 kind of did that,” Tony pointed a thumb back at the three as he turned the monitor back, “kind of busy trying to figure out how to send the three musketeers back to where they came from.”

“He's Porthos,” Peggy interjected with a look at Howard and Steve could not help the grin that appeared on his face. He understood that reference and it seemed very apt that Howard was Porthos in an unusual way.

Tony, meanwhile, sighed loudly and shook his head, “Listen, NYPD's going to have to take this one-”

“They're reporting that there's Chitauri-like creatures coming out of the middle of nowhere dressed in World War II HYDRA armor,” Maria said and Steve frowned. The Chitauri had invaded three years ago and they certainly were not wearing the dark black HYDRA armor. “Might explain your guests...” Either way, he knew that this was something that he and Tony had to deal with being the only two Avengers at the tower at the moment. If Tony wanted the Avengers to succeed in wake of SHIELD's collapse, then they would have to make sure that this problem was dealt with.

“Tony-”

“Yeah, figures,” Tony sounded annoyed but shook his head, “Hill, can you keep an eye on our guests here while Cap and I deal with this. Also, see if you can get Rhodey or Bird Boy Falcon up here. We might need the backup if they're not busy.”

“Banner?” Maria tilted her head at the question.

“Is the world ending?” Tony replied and Steve was about to suggest that maybe they should bring Dr. Banner back from wherever he went, but his friend shut up him with an arched look.

“And...the Winter Soldier?” Maria asked and Steve grimaced.

“No,” he replied, “not until we know the situation is under control.” With all of HYDRA and SHIELD's files available to the public, there was a chance that the world knew of the Winter Soldier even though Steve had not seen any sign of it so far in his quick internet browsing. Still, he would not risk Bucky being accidentally recognized in public and potentially being arrested if he appeared in the fight. He also did not want to put his best friend into another combat situation and have him kill unless it was completely dire. It was not that he did not trust Bucky, but he wanted to give him a measure of deserved peace. Bucky was not a tool to be used and he would not field him as a soldier unless he explicitly asked first.

“Roger that,” Maria nodded in understanding, “I'll coordinate logistics with you. Channel Alpha-dash-Zed-One.”

“Canadian,” Tony said as Maria shook her head at his antics before disconnecting the call with a tight smile. Task done, he pushed the monitor away and flicked away all of the hard-light information with a quick gesture before looking at the three, “Okay, so here's the situation...”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm deeply humbled (and pleasantly surprised) by all of the kudos and support this fic has gotten! See you in the next part!


	5. Part 4 - There But For the Grace of God

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Stargate SG-1" Season 1 (the definitive episode where the quantum mirror is introduced to the SG-1 Universe).

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Part 4 – There But For the Grace of God_

 

Howard was no stranger to war-time footage and reels of film shown, but he knew that most of them were propaganda and filmed only when the safety of the film crew was assured as well as through government approval. Most of the time, he was not allowed onto the field, being a civilian and also the United States government's biggest weapons contractor. Too valuable to be risked on front lines. So he had to content himself with after-action reports, listening into debriefs by the Howling Commandos, and even occasionally walking the fields of battle after the battle had been won. Finow was one such case Jarvis having obliquely mentioned it to him in an encrypted phone call after he had been picked up for interrogation by Chief Dooley and the SSR. What had happened in Finow...he did not know why Dooley wanted to know about that, but vowed to never let that horrific event see the light of day.

That said, he was not blind to what Captain Rogers and the Howling Commandos had done during their time in the war. He had read the reports, had even participated in some of the pre-mission briefings, giving the Commandos the necessary gear for certain missions. He had even picked them up occasionally from their extraction point under heavy fire after they had accomplished their goals, but he had never known _what_ or had even _seen_ how Steve Rogers operated in the field until now.

Until all 104-inches of plasma television was broadcasting _live_ the grainy, shaky image of Captain America in action on the streets of the lower east side. It was one of the many images that was projecting what was happening at that very moment downtown. It was something Howard could not believe what he was seeing as well as all of the sheer information of it _happening at the moment_. How...how did people in this futuristic time comprehend such information overload nearly made him dizzied to think about it. He had quickly discovered that focusing on one source instead of the many sources shown on the screen was a lot easier than to take it all in at the same time.

“Stark, sit rep!” Steve's voice blared across the speakers that were cleverly hidden within the spacious room and Howard risked a quick look back to see the stern, but extraordinarily beautiful woman, move her hands in front of her. A smaller version of what was projected onto the 104-inch plasma encircled her, distorting her body a little, but she seemed not to pay attention to him and instead, was focused on the smaller version of the screens. She had abruptly introduced herself to him and Jarvis as Maria Hill, the apparent head of security for the tower and what was the New York branch of Stark Industries. He had taken a brief moment to comprehend the fact that Stark Industries had grown to have _branches_ all over the world. It had left him reeling at how much his personal business had grown in seventy years.

The quip about her beauty and her competency had nearly fallen from his lips before she had brushed right past him and seemed more focused on introducing herself to Peggy. He instantly recognized the slight giddiness, pride, and awe in Maria's posture before she had re-introduced herself to Peggy as _Agent_ Maria Hill before saying that Peggy had been an inspiration to her. They had been baffled and Howard had asked what she had meant by that before she only gave them a mysterious smile and said that she could not say anything because of what Tony had told her about destabilizing the stable time loop.

Howard had tried to wheedle a bit of information out of her, but she had ignored even his best attempts at flirting with her and had immediately waved her hands and fingers around, setting up what looked like a miniature command post and war room in the spacious common area that they had found themselves in just hours ago. He was still amazed at how Maria and even Tony had seemingly conjured the hard-light images out of thin air, even after Tony had tried to explain to him that it was motion sensor based as well as holographic projections and something about computerized chips embedded in something he had not quite comprehended – his mind mostly distracted by the sheer _futursitic_ look of everything. It was as if he was reading more of Asimov's works, of pulp novels that people could only dream of in the books.

Maria had said that normally there was a war room dedicated to the Avengers' mission, but since Tony had talked to her about their appearance, she would have thought it more prudent for her to conduct her status as mission control with them present. Howard would have easily brought into that, having been in awe by the amount of video feeds and apparently real-time footage she had brought up onto the plasma television that he had been eyeing the last time he was in the room, except for Peggy. She had asked if it was because Tony was worried that they would escape like lab rats out of the maze and far from being offended, Maria had only nodded with the practicality of a person who had long dealt with secrets and all sorts of subterfuge.

She had plainly told them that Tony had quickly explained to her that he could not risk the world seeing them and potentially cause a time paradox. But instead of leaving it at that, she had further told them it was because in the future, in the day and age that they had landed in, all three were very well known, Howard more than Peggy and Jarvis, but by extension all three would bring Tony and Steve's enemies to their doorstep if they took one step outside of the tower.

Howard had been disturbed by the fact that his son had enemies and also that Steve had new enemies – he would have thought that as Captain _America_ he would be beloved by the people, too kind-hearted, too good of a person to ever have enemies. He understood that he himself was not well-liked by many of his business rivals, but to find that his son, that Tony, was still a target...he did not like that one bit. He had silently vowed then that if and when he got back to his time period, he would personally make sure that Stark Industries would have no enemies, that his son would be able to grow up in peace.

But it had been Jarvis who had asked if the enemies Tony and Steve had were related to her status as mission control for the Avengers. Maria had answered frankly that it was partially that, that in this day and age, Steve was still Captain America, but that Tony Stark had taken up the public mantle of being Iron Man. She did not tell them why he had become Iron Man - a man dressed in an advance sophisticated battle armor that Howard could not even begin to comprehend how it worked - but rather told them that both men were part of a team called the Avengers – similar to the Commandos. Howard had been heartened to hear that even now, Steve had others, besides Tony, to relate to.

It had been one of the first things he had noticed, that Steve looked _exhausted_. It wasn't a physical exhaustion, but more of a mental one, almost as if he was alone and barely had any friends in the modern age they had been transported into. He suppose that wherever Steve had been found, it must have been jarring to wake up and find people like himself dead, or others like Peggy, very old. He must have also still have been hurting from his best friend Bucky's loss.

Howard had time to come to terms with Bucky's death, having not been as close to him as Steve, but he thought that for someone like Steve who had, now technically, died only a month after Bucky's fall from the train in the Alps; he still looked like he was still haunted by Bucky's ghost. Howard knew that look very well because it was the same one he saw every morning he got up and found himself in an unfamiliar place, reminding himself that he was on the run – that everything he had done was for naught. That Steve...if and when he returned to 1946 would still be frozen, still be thought of as dead.

And Howard silently vowed, as he focused on one of the grainy images on the plasma television screen, that he would find Steve at his last coordinates and wake him up before all of this happened. That he would not have to wake up like a stranger in a strange land. Even if he went back, had no memories, anything, he would find Steve Rogers. Steve would wake up surrounded by family and friends. Not by strangers who left him with a haunted look and memories that he could not relate to.

And just as fast as that thought occurred to him, he saw the bright red-white-blue shield of Captain America cross the screen, Steve clearly running through empty streets after stopping by a police barrier on Broome and Allen Streets. Howard realized he could not do that to Steve. Not for all his friend, his pal, stood for. Even if it did screw up the time loop, he could see the good that Steve was doing right in front of him, right on the screen projecting the real-time images in front of his eyes.

“I'm circling the area, scanning for any tachyon anomalies,” Tony's voice blared right back to Steve's command and Howard glanced up to the corner of the screen to see what was clearly the display from the Iron Man suit giving them his perspective, flying around rather dizzily before multiple concentric circles popped up on the display.

“Anomalies detected, sir,” the faint metallic humanly-tinged voice of JARVIS, the artificial intelligence named after his own butler Edwin Jarvis, spoke in a polite cadence. Howard squinted against the rather small projection around the giant television screen, and read the line of small text that said tachyon anomalies were spotted and their locations highlighted.

He focused back to the main footage to see the grainy image of both Steve and Tony who was flying around the edges, pull farther back, the helicopter carrying the media camera having been ordered to a safer distance. However, the other screens surrounding the enlarged media one had not changed perspective. “How...”

“Police footage. NYPD and Homeland Security has graciously allowed Stark Industries, or actually the Avengers to use their video feeds from both dashboard cameras, police-mounted cameras, and surveillance footage to ensure optimal success for any mission the Avengers are called upon to deal with. It's the first thing I negotiated when I was hired by Stark Industries after my previous employer imploded,” Maria answered his unspoken question and he glanced back at her, flashing her a quick smile.

“Sounds like a story,” he saw her take a quick look at him before shaking her head, a small crooked smile on her face before she turned back to her own feed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jarvis roll his eyes and heave a faint sigh before look back at Peggy who was only glaring at him. “What?”

Peggy looked like she was about to say something, but held her tongue and instead, turned her attention back to the television screen. Not everything that came out of his mouth was what either Jarvis or Peggy thought it was – he _was_ interested in what Maria had said. It also helped that he thought that she was extremely gorgeous, dressed in the business outfit that certainly accentuated her curves. Women's fashion sure changed in this day and age if she was allowed to wear something like that in an office setting. A brief extraneous thought occurred to him; maybe the reason why Peggy was looking at him like that was because this Maria Hill was Tony's dame, girl or something? But that did not make sense based on the way Tony had addressed her when she called – more of a mother hen-like or in a business matter. Or it could have been that Tony was completely professional outside of an intimate context...Howard blinked his eyes rapidly to clear away the thoughts. He did _not_ need to speculate on his future son's love life, or if there even was one, considering the fact that he still was trying to come to terms that Tony Stark _was his son_.

“I'm getting strong readings on Henry and Grand-”

“Sergeant Sousa's team is on the corner of East Broadway and Grand-”

“Scouting the area,” Tony's voice ended on an abrupt click that Howard knew was either him turning off his radio or changing to a more private line. Not even a second later, he saw the television camera zoom towards the rather ostentatious looking red-gold armor of Iron Man flying to what looked like the corner of Henry Street and Grand Street. The area had not changed much, though there was a little more green than the dusty soot color Howard remembered. It somehow gave him a measure of comfort, to know that his beloved city had aged well in the course of nearly seventy years.

“Hill, status on Falcon and War Machine?” Steve's comm. line was still open and Howard thought he spotted his red-white-blue form crossing the streets and blocks with rapid ease, making his way towards where Tony, or rather, Iron Man had flown towards.

“War Machine's overseas, looks like he won't make it back in time. Falcon is on his way, but his pack isn't designed for atmospheric flight,” Hill said, “should I hail Coulson and his team for any ground ops here?”

“Not until we know what we're dealing with,” Steve replied just as the camera abruptly tilted a little as flashes of lights started to dance around Iron Man.

“-whoa, whoa! I found them Cap!” Tony's voice suddenly blasted across the comm. lines followed by the muffled sounds of things exploding and impacting near him. “Hostile forces, definitely dressed like black-clad HYDRA soldiers- Shit!” There was the definite sound of a hollow thonk and Howard felt his heart seize a little.

“Stark!” Steve's voice was calm, but with a note of urgency and Howard watched as the red-white-blue form that had been running at a steady pace towards Henry and Grand suddenly blur into an outright sprint. More must have been said on some other radio frequency, or perhaps even shouted, because the grainy footage suddenly showed a bunch of smaller black-clad people with the word SWAT and NYPD branded on their chests, holding sophisticated machine guns pour out of the corner of East Broadway and Grand, forming a circular perimeter as Steve rushed past them.

“I'm fine! Just a bit...cooked, yep, they've got weapons! They're not...they're not like the Item 34 the Chitauri left behind, but they certainly _look_ like them!”

Howard had no idea what Tony meant by his words, but he suspected that maybe it was some technological wonder that had given the Avengers trouble the last time they had faced these...Chitauri. He was more disturbed that whatever was attacking wore HYDRA uniforms, from his time. Surely HYDRA did not exist seventy years in the future? Steve had ensured that with the downing of the Valkyrie and Schmidt's supposed death. Though when Steve had said that he did not exactly kill Schmidt, more like saw him disappear with the powerful cuboid that had created HYDRA's advance weaponry, he supposed that there was a chance that Schmidt was still alive. The possibility was very remote, but Steve was living proof that he somehow survived, that Project Rebirth gave him the ability to survive all the way to the future. What was to say that Dr. Erskine's first creation, Johann Schmidt could not do the same.

But Steve did not seem concerned about Schmidt, so he supposed there was some comfort in that – Schmidt did not exist in this day and age. But still, there was the real concern about the black-clad HYDRA soldiers.

“Sir, I'm picking up readings of tachyon anomalies located within the building,” JARVIS's voice piped through and Howard blinked, automatically glancing up at the ceiling. Tony's computerized artificial intelligence was able to somehow detect anomalies with that kind of precision?

He realized he must have voiced his question out loud as JARVIS's voice piped down, a louder modulation than what he was hearing from the comm. “I am installed in both the Iron Man suits of Sir and within the Tower, Mr. Stark.” As the artificial intelligence was speaking, a window of sorts, projected by the hard-light system that he had spent the last few hours playing with down in Tony's workshop, popped up in front of him, giving him what looked like readings from what Tony's suit had apparently picked up. The marvel and wonder of having a suit that did all of these things without actually holding gadgets aside, Howard tentatively reached out and touched the reading, a frown on his face.

“They're...um, JARVIS, can you bring up the ones that brought us here?”

“Uh, sir-”

“Sorry, I meant, the computer JARVIS,” Howard shot a quick grin at his butler who looked mildly miffed, but seemed to accept the slip. He did not quite know how to feel about Tony – it was still a little weird to think of the man that was older than him as his son – naming his artificial intelligence butler after Edwin Jarvis. He could tell that Jarvis was immensely touched, but Howard himself felt a little guiltily crushed.

He had gathered in the brief spate of conversation he had with Tony before Steve had arrived with Peggy and Jarvis in tow, that Tony had a very hard family life and that was something that ate at him. When Tony had first arrived in the workshop, he had been rather giddy about showing him various technological wonders and even enthusiastically sharing his knowledge, as if he was trying to impress him. However, something had happened in the middle of that conversation and Howard could not help but think that it had been something he said. Tony had abruptly turned cold and told him in so many words that he had been a really bad father when he had been growing up.

That was something Howard could never see himself doing. He knew of his own reputation, but he had been thinking lately about what his legacy would be – especially since the SSR was now on his tail and accusing him of selling weapons on the black market. What would the Stark legacy be? Project Rebirth was his crowning achievement and Steve's death – though now he was very well alive – had struck something within him. He wanted to live up to Steve's legacy...and the fact that Tony had all but said he was a terrible father...it hurt to hear that. But Tony had not been finished and had gone on a short rant about how cold and calculating he was, how he never told him that he loved him – something Howard could never seen himself doing, especially to a child of his own – that he sent him to boarding school and it was the happiest day of his life to get Anthony E. Stark out of his hair and go back to running the ruthless company he created.

Howard had tried to apologize, but at the same time, had begun to feel a little angry for all of the slights that Tony had threw at him when he himself had not even begun to do any of that. He did not even know _who_ Tony's mother was and tried to defend himself. It had ended in a tense silence between the two of them before Steve, Peggy, and Jarvis had arrived.

Then before Maria had called, Tony had told him, still furiously hurt and seething with resentment, that he and Jarvis were unceremoniously dead in this day and age. When that had happened, something in Howard twisted in pain. He realized that if he went back to 1946, he would not live to see Steve alive again. That he would probably die before he ever saw Steve again. It had stung then and still did now...

Howard shook his head as a flash of color and light in the television screen beyond the projection he was seeing snapped him out of his dark thoughts. It was something he needed to talk to Tony about later, again, even if it came to blows or if he had to physically restrain Tony and tell him that he was not this _man_ , this _father_ that Tony had grown up with. Not yet, nor not _ever_. If he went back, he would raise his future son like a loving parent. No boarding school, no calculating stares, nothing that would make Tony feel like he had to be compared to someone greater.

“Sir, the readings have a ninety-eight percent match,” JARVIS spoke up, “it would seem that this is the same anomaly that have transported you, Agent Carter, and Mr. Jarvis here.”

“Another 0-8-4?” Steve asked, his breath huffing a little before the distinctive _thwang_ sound of his shield hitting something echoed across the comm. Howard looked up in time to see a red-white-blue blur hit several black-clad looking things. He glanced over to Tony's display, but could not really see a good glimpse of what those creatures looked like Tony's targeting reticule flashing green and red as he fired what looked like bright powerful bolts of light from his gloves.

“Steve, two behind, trying to flank you-”

“See them, thanks, Peg,” Howard looked back to the main camera feed in time to see Steve spin and leap over a parked car before lashing out with a strong kick to one before grabbing the other in a headlock and slamming him to the ground, his arms twisting a little to break the creature's neck.

He glanced over to see Peggy staring at the feeds with a critical eye, her gaze roaming all over the place and smiled a little. Trust Peggy to have her head completely on straight- He frowned as he saw her rub her temples absently. “Peg, you okay?”

“The headache's back-”

“The last time you had one you went into that entropic cascade failure-” no sooner did Howard speak, Peggy suddenly collapsed to the floor, her body shaking violently, her face ghosting with silent horrifying screams. “Peggy!” he took two steps over to her before Jarvis suddenly pulled at him.

“Sir, no! Remember what happened last time?!” Jarvis blocked him from moving any further, but Howard was having none of it.

“Peggy?! What's happening?”

“Is she having an entropic cascade failure- More incoming!”

The sounds of the fight in Steve and Tony's comms, were seemingly drowned out as Howard stared at Peggy, shaking like a leaf on the carpeted ground. He made to move forward again, trying to brush Jarvis off of him.

“I can't just leave her like that-”

“Sir-”

Just as suddenly the shaking stop, leaving Peggy breathlessly gasping on the ground, her hands clenched into fists, her hair pooled in a messy halo around her head. Howard did not even hesitate to push Jarvis' arm off of his own and rushed to her side. He knelt down next to her and tentatively reached out to touch her hand. A grimace appeared on his face as he braced himself to be thrown clear across the room, but after a few seconds, nothing happened and he cracked open an eye. “Peggy?”

“I-I'm...f-fine-” Peggy started, but was cut off by a panicked shout from Tony across the comms.

“Holy shit, Steve! Watch out!” Howard looked up in time to see the red-white-blue blur that was Steve Rogers suddenly stumble backwards, an unmistakable spray of red flying from his chest. His heart caught in his throat as Peggy grip stiffened in his hand, the two of them seeing the same thing. Did they just see Steve die?

* * *

The workshop was devoid of any movement save for the occasional chirp of the robotic arms that served Tony Stark. One of the arms, Dummy who had been assigned to sweep the lab, peered up from his work with a curious chirrup of his clamps. At the same time he accidentally dropping his broom, watching as the lonely object on the table in the farthest corner suddenly started to shake and whine. He knew his creator had been tinkering with it earlier and that three people had appeared, but they seemed friendly enough that time. He tilted his head a little as the object glowed blue before just as suddenly, a person materialized next to the object.

He was dressed in a black tactical vest, a black balaclava covering the lower half of his mouth, but the robotic arm deigned to ignore the person, recognizing his features as a friendly in the tower as he lowered his head to pick up the broom once more. Dummy did not really make more note of the blond-hair blue-eyed soldier that took one calculated tactical look around the workshop before stalking forward.

The soft whine of his metallic right arm clenched into a fist as he brushed past the robotic arms, intent on hunting down his targets. Director Peggy Carter and Dr. Howard Stark were enemies in Herr Zola's HYDRA Empire, their false-Captain America, Captain Barnes, already dead by his hand just before he had touched the object. They would perish by his hand, already betrayed by the traitor in their midst the butler Edwin Jarvis after Dr. Stark refused to help him rescue his wife Anna. All he needed to do was to finish the job, their escape route bringing them here to this bright foreign workshop.

They were his mission and he would not fail.

* * *

Steve gritted his teeth as the knife drew a line of blood across his chest, the blade seemingly able to penetrate the layers of kevlar he had in his armor. He had barely dodged the blow, but the cut still sent a spray of blood into the air and he automatically reached up to stem it, rolling and dodging the next attack from his knife-wielding assailant. He blocked again, his shield clanging against the knife blow. This...alien HYDRA creature was not like the others, even though it was dressed in the same black armor with the HYDRA logo on it. He was fast and strong, and the blade of his knife definitely had special properties that had not been introduced in the nineteen forties.

The others that had come pouring out of the building that Tony had identified with markers similar to whatever particles that apparently had surrounded the 0-8-4 that brought the three time travelers here. He had no idea what Tony was saying regarding that, but he definitely understood that these were hostile forces and that they certainly did not _belong_ in this time stream. He got that these hostile alien-soldiers were displaced in time, much like Peggy, Howard, and Jarvis, but instead of being benevolent and willing to listen to reason, they had immediately attacked Sergeant Sousa's men, driving them one block back before he and Tony had arrived to contain the situation.

The creatures were definitely alien, and not of this world, but they were not Chitauri. Instead of the purple-grey skin of the Chitauri, they had blue skin, looked humanoid enough with five-fingers, but also chattered in a language with gestures that Steve had immediately identified as highly sophisticated and definitely tactical considering he had been jumped by five of them at the same time. The oddest part was that they were _dressed_ in the familiar black uniforms and body armor of HYDRA from World War II. He had been fighting several of them off when their apparent leader had ambushed him, his knife scoring a mildly deep cut across his kevlar and chest.

“Steve!” he heard Tony's shout across the comm, but could not answer him as he dodged another blow and kicked, his boot crunching against the creature's armor. However, instead of flying back like the others who came before him, the creature only staggered back a little before charging forward once more, knife held in a backwards grip.

Steve blocked the first blow by shuffling forward, catching the creature's forearm across his own and lashed out with his other hand, gripping the knife arm in a solid grip. He could feel the pull and bulge of muscle underneath the grip before he twisted, sending the creature to the ground. At the same time, he rolled with the grip, stepping in instep and disarmed the knife from the man's grip with a twist of his own wrists. He did not get time to catch his breath as he grimaced at the blow to his kidneys before scrabbling to roll into a crouch and stared at the other man whose helmet had gotten twisted from his move.

Steve charged forward with his shield and threw it, his surprise mounting at the sudden flick of the man's arm and watched as his shield went flying to the side. There was two other people he knew that could easily block his shield like that without a second thought, and one of them was at the tower while the other was disintegrated by the cube known as the Tesseract. Who was this creature? A second later, he met the alien with a flying knee to the chest, sending him staggering back before he punched him in the face, disorienting the helmet some more before he blocked two blows and twisted to the side, as the creature lashed out. He caught a blow to his chest and winced as it came in contact with his wound, but gritted his teeth and pushed past the pain, blocking two more, one high one low- Steve felt the breath leave him at the sudden kick to his stomach, the blow almost as solid as the one he had given earlier and staggered back. He looked up to see the man rip his helmet off and he felt his jaw drop in sheer shock.

He...looked like him.

Except for the haircut that Steve recognized as his own which was still in the nineteen-forties, and the utterly malevolent and cruel smile on his face, the man looked exactly like him. Until he spoke, that is.

“Well, well,” the sound was definitely his own, but the manner of speech and cadence, it sounded oddly familiar, almost...Germanic if he could get past the accent. “It seems the world we were promised comes with its own defender. Tell me, Captain, how would you like to die _this_ time around?”

Steve never knew the face that was his own could ever produce a leering, sinister smile such as the one he was seeing. It looked utterly foreign, but he knew he had seen it somewhere...some time... It hit him then as he stared back into the blue eyes he had seen in the mirror a thousand times before. He could see it...could see the hate, the insanity, the death-like skull.

“...Red Skull...” he whispered and saw the smile grow a hair wider in confirmation of who the man wearing his face really was. Somehow, the Red Skull had possessed his body in whatever time warp he had gone through to get here. And judging by the other man's words, he had killed him by possessing his body.

“Ah...the boy gets it,” it was easier now, to hear the familiar Germanic cadence of the Red Skull's voice in his own, the accented English, the smile and malevolence that had been exuded in the man's voice. “My body was failing due to the serum's rejection, so Herr Doktor Zola devised a plan to transfer my consciousness into your healthy body and you into my failing one. It was glorious watching you die by the hands of your comrades as they sought to rescue you and instead shot you.”

“...Steve...he's...he's got your body...what the hell...?” Steve barely heard the whine of repulsors hovering above him along with Tony's strangled voice as he continued to stare at the darker version of himself. He could almost see it, the Commandos rushing into whatever sick lab HYDRA had, finding him and Schmidt hooked up to wires as they automatically gunned down the Red Skull's body, himself pleading for them to shoot the other one. He could see the Red Skull using his body to then kill his friends in the aftermath, their shock and horror at what they had done paralyzing them to the spot. He could almost see it-

It was only years of instinct and timed by several cries over the comm in his ear that he managed to dodge the Red Skull's surprise attack and picked his discarded shield up. The blade scored a line across his side as he pivoted and grabbed the Red Skull's arm, disarming the knife with a quick twist of his wrists before he slammed his shield as a whole into the rest of the Skull's body, knocking him several feet back as he tumbled head-over-heels and landed in a crouch. Steve flicked his shield forward, knocking the Skull back several more feet as he charged towards him, grabbing his shield out of the air as it rebounded.

No matter where the Skull came from, even if he was possessing his body, there was no way that he would allow the madman to roam free in _his_ timeline. Not after what he had just said and not ever. He heard Tony's repulsors whine and blast apart several of the HYDRA soldiers that had apparently come to their leader's aid as he focused on the Skull. Tony would be able to cover his back, he thought as he blocked the first blow, pushing aside another before he caught a kick in his ribs, grunting from the impact. He made to grab at the Skull's outstretched leg, but the man apparently had time to get used to his new body as he nimbly twisted out of the way before hammering him with an elbow.

Steve brought his shield up, deflecting it and felt the Skull grab at his shield, but he kept his grip tight on its inner handles and as soon as he felt the tell-tale tug on his shield, he rammed forward, throwing him off balance. He lashed out with a snap kick, sending him into the brick wall of the building that had been identified with the anomalous readings, ducking a second later as the hairs on the back of his neck tickled in warning. The bolt passed harmlessly over his head and hit the Skull square in the stomach as he doubled over in pain. Steve took advantage of his wounded state and rammed his knee into the man's chest, driving him further into the concrete bricks and through them, the two of them landing in a flurry of metallic mailboxes and scraps of envelopes, magazine papers, and ripped up electronic wires.

He rolled with the impact, grimacing as he came in contact with several pieces of sharp debris, and got to his feet, turning in time to see stars flash across his vision at the same time pain exploded across his temples. He managed to weakly block a blow he saw coming out of the corner of his eye as the Skull dropped a metal folding chair he had used to hammer at his face, the metal twisted and bent from the force of the blow. Steve backed away, raising his shield to block the next one, shaking his head as the momentary disorientation passed.

He saw the Skull take a small step back, staring at him, face bloodied and breath coming in gasps. His wound was bleeding a dark red stain that was even visible underneath the blackened armor and Steve could feel drips of sweat, mingled with the sting of open wounds and blood dripping down his own uniform.

“You are far faster than I remembered, Captain,” the Skull said with a red-stained grin.

“And that's not yours,” he shot back, gesturing with his chin to the Skull's body. Whatever timeline, whatever time period or even alternate reality – if what Tony said about entropic cascade failure was true – the Skull had come from, he knew what he had to do. If he truly was dead in the time period and reality the madman had come through, then he needed to end this, if not for his friends who all died by his hand, but so that no one would have to deal with the Skull in their time period. Planning to bomb the United States of America was crazy enough; hijacking his body was a whole new level of insanity.

The Skull chuckled darkly before charging forward, swinging wide. Steve braced himself and caught the glint of a knife in the man's other hand just as the punch careened towards him. He let it hit his arm as he half-twisted _towards_ the Skull, and slammed his shoulder into the man's chest. At the same time, he pulled the elbow holding his shield back, driving the edge of it into his exposed left ribs. With his freed hands, he reached down to grab the knife and disarmed him again with a snap of bones. He continued his momentum, dropping the knife as he swung his right arm around and finished with a choke hold around the Skull's neck. He could feel the immediate bulge of muscle as the Skull automatically grabbed at his arm, but Steve quickly finished it with a quick snap of the man's neck, breaking it before letting the body fall to the ground in a crumpled heap.

He stood there for a few seconds, staring at the crumpled body of himself, feeling the hitch of his breath coming in slight gasps. The adrenaline was slowly wearing away as the distant sounds of repulsors followed by cries of the invading Chitauri-like soldiers died. It was eerie seeing his own body on the ground, eyes closed, head turned just so that it looked like he was only peacefully sleeping instead of dead. He absently touched his ear, “Stark, sit rep.”

“Cap, that you?” Tony's voice sounded almost as breathless as he did over the comm, before the clomp of his boots touched down behind him. He turned to see Stark warily approach, repulsors still glowing, but not quite raised at him. He understood the caution, suppressing the hurt that came with it, as he stepped to the side to allow Tony to see the body of the Red Skull wearing his face.

“Yeah, still getting trace amounts of tachyon fields off of this guy,” Tony murmured before looking at him. “You okay Steve?”

“I will be,” he replied, surprised at his own honesty when he knew he normally would just shrug it off. He realized the fact that the Red Skull had possessed his body had shaken him a lot more than he had thought. He was a soldier first and foremost. The safety and security of his friends was far more paramount than his own needs.

“JARVIS is reporting that most of the invading aliens have been dealt with, Sousa's team sweeping the perimeter right now,” Tony said almost conversationally after a few seconds of silence as he crouched down and held up a glowing hand towards the dead body. “I can definitely trace the source from this guy and it's in this building.”

Steve knelt down next to Tony, pursing his lips as he stared at the body. He could not see any visible difference, no ripple field or anything that he had expected from the pulp novels Bucky loved to the various time-travel movies he remembered watching since he had woken up from the ice. Someone at SHIELD had once thought it would be relevant for him to understand how others sometimes felt waking up in different time periods even when he had clearly known it was Hollywood's attempt to commercialize and maybe romanticize time travel or have people lost in different time periods. Still, he had brought into the concept a little bit, enjoying the mindless romantic image for what it had been.

He absently reached out, not knowing what made him do so, but something told him that he _needed_ to reach out-

“Wait- Steve-”

That was when he...no, when they both saw it...

_He met Tony's gaze as he stepped out of the police car, hands cuffed in front of him. The sheer number of flashes from photographers' bulbs nearly blinded him as microphones were shoved into his face. The cacophony of question and general noise was so great, but Steve only had his eyes on Tony who stood in the middle of the press mob, stoic, silent, and staring right back. He did not look like the man who had won a victory, but rather looked crushed, a Pyrrhic victory for him and Steve could only stare back. He knew he could easily blame Tony for what had happened, the Superhero Registration Act, the fight between the two of them, the destruction that had followed the two of them as they embroiled the world in their fight. But Steve did not blame his friend, he only blamed the fact that he got so many innocents were caught up in this._

_“Steve-”_

_Steve gently shook his head against Sam's protest behind him, Natasha standing right next to him as he felt the gentle touch of Sharon's arm on his own._

_“Come on, let's get this over with,” Sharon had been assigned as part of his security detail, still working for the CIA, but silent on where she stood in the whole of the civil war that had been between him and Tony._

_He did not see where Clint or T'Challa were, but knew that they were somewhere in the crowd. He thought he could feel the distant eyes of Bucky on him, watching from somewhere above, forever guarding his back. Everyone had come to see Captain Steven G. Rogers, Captain America, be brought to justice, arrested for his actions against the Superhero Registration Act._

_He turned back to see Tony still standing stoically among the sea of reporters, ignoring all questions and microphones shoved against him, reporters demanding a statement regarding what had happened. Steve's gaze softened a little as he silently communicated to Tony that he forgave him-_

_And that was when he felt the agonizing rip of a bullet tear through him, making him stumble, his breath leaving him. The coppery-metallic taste of blood filled his mouth as he choked and tried to draw a breath- And suddenly found himself staring up at a blinding white light-_

Steve jerked back, and nearly fell to the ground as he reached out to steady himself, his breaths coming in gasps as he met Tony's gaze, noting the equally shocked look on the other man's face. Did he and Tony see him die in that...flash forward, alternate reality, alternate time line?  Some future event because it certainly was not in the past.

“What-”

Tony did not get to finish whatever he was saying as the comm line suddenly fizzled with a hiss of static followed by Maria's frantic voice, “-need you back! -inter Soldier! He's- -attacking-”

Static filled the line after and Steve blinked once; his shock at seeing his future death, past death, maybe a death from another time and place, shoved to the side by the immediacy of what Maria's frantic transmission was about. The Winter Soldier was attacking Maria and the others in the tower.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on vacation and will not be answering any emails or comments until after March 22nd, 2015. Thank you again for your support, kudos, and reviews – I'm really touched by all of it.


	6. Part 5 - Before I Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from "Stargate Atlantis" Season 1.

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Part 5 – Before I Sleep_

 

Maria Hill always prided herself on her skills not as a hand-to-hand combat specialist, but rather keeping a level head in the midst of any crisis – be it an alien invasion in New York, discovering Grant Ward's betrayal of Coulson's team, or even the sudden appearance of three people displaced from time. So the abrupt appearance of a metal-armed man that  _should_ have been Steve Rogers, cratering Tony's very expensive coffee table in the middle of the common area of the penthouse, did not phase her at all. Instead, she coolly and instinctively reacted, rolling away from her virtual station and drawing her gun, firing several bullets towards the blue-black clad super soldier.

At the same time, she shoved Howard behind her, pulling them towards a loveseat for cover, noting how he was gaping at the sight, seemingly paralyzed by the shock of seeing Steve attacking them. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noted that both Edwin Jarvis and Agent Peggy Carter had reacted by ducking behind one of the other loveseats. Carter had drawn out her handgun and Maria inwardly grinned to herself.

The woman that was to be one of SHIELD's founders and its first Director was one of the two reasons why she had accepted Nick Fury's offer to join SHIELD in the first place. She joined after her second tour of duty was up from the Balkans and Kosovo Wars in the late 90s. She had been ONI then, Office of Naval Intelligence, and had been considering a job offer to join the CIA before Fury had offered her a SHIELD mission to Brazil, specifically São Paulo. It was there that she had met Clint Barton and Clint Barton had ended up recruiting the deadly agent known as Black Widow, Natasha Romanov after the destruction of a children's hospital through a deadly fire.

She and Romanov had joined SHIELD around the same time, but had taken completely different paths, Maria working behind the scenes with her understanding of intelligence and information gathering; Romanov far more suited as a field agent and asset. Her rise up the ranks of SHIELD had been aided by her mentorship with former Director Carter who had retired then, but had not begun to show the symptoms of her dementia. Carter had somehow taken a shine to her and begun to mentor her – but in the oddest of ways. There would always be subtle clues left for her whether she woke up one morning or came back from a mission, leading her to learn certain information for missions she had been on or if there had been questions that lingered after a mission.

Seeing Carter here, when she was at the beginning of her long, illustrious career, Maria had been amazed in the short time to see the fiery passion and gumption that drove her to be the woman she had come to know in the late 90s and early 00s. She had never quite understood Steve's devotion and love for her until now. Agent Peggy Carter was already an independent self-made woman that inspired others even before Steve had been turned into the super soldier. She understood that Carter inspired Steve and could easily see in turn that Steve inspired her with his stubbornness and earnest need to not let those who would bring them down win.

And she could easily see the traits that had driven Steve twisted for evil purposes in such a way that it was evident in the man that was crouched in the cratered remnants of the coffee table. The blond-haired blue-eyed super soldier that had suddenly appeared in their midst was definitely not  _their_ Captain America, and instead, looked more like a corrupted version of the Winter Soldier – metal arm and all. She had tried to hail  _her_ reality's Steve to let him know that the Winter Soldier was attacking, but the EMP burst that had pulsed out from the metal arm had shorted her radio as well as plunging most of the electronics within the vicinity into darkness.

Where this version of Steve Rogers came from she did not know, but she had a feeling that he might have come from the 0-8-4 that sat in Stark's workshop. She had only thought that it was for transporting people back and forth through time, at least that was what Stark had said. But it seemed now – especially with Steve fighting the Red Skull who had taken over his body just mere minutes ago – people from alternate realities were also coming through. They needed to find out how to send Carter, Jarvis, and Howard back and figure out how to  _stop_ others from coming through.

“ _That's_ not Steve,” Howard sounded stunned as he made to peer back out, but Maria yanked on his collar, pulling him back behind the loveseat.

“Are you  _trying_ to get yourself killed?” she hissed at him, as she fired blindly towards the Winter Soldier's general direction. She took a quick look at where Carter and Jarvis were crouched behind their loveseat and frowned. Carter still looked pale and disoriented from her bout with entropic cascade failure, nonetheless, she was still clutching her silvery handgun, cognizant, and aware of her surroundings. 

Maria had never seen someone suffer from what Stark had called entropic cascade failure until moments before the Winter Soldier had attacked. She had gotten the gist of what Stark had been rambling about and had a chance to observe the three, but she had never actually seen it happen until then. It had frightened her, to see the ghostly images of Carter seemingly pulled from her own face as she shook with seizures. The odd thing was that those ghostly images had variations, like different hairstyles, scars, and even expressions, but the only constant thing was that it was Carter's face in all of them – and all of them seemed to be in agony.

“But- But, that's-” Howard's words ended on a yelp of fear at the sudden intrusion of a knife in between their faces, rammed through layers of foam and pillow.

Maria immediately reacted on instinct and shoved Howard towards the others before she vaulted over the seat, landing a flying kick towards the Winter Soldier's face. It was like hitting a very hard brick wall as she grimaced, feeling the pain shoot up from her foot. But the force of the kick did some damage as the blond-haired Winter Soldier's face twisted to the side. She landed and rolled into a crouch, firing her gun twice to which the Soldier blocked with his gleaming metallic arm, a sick parody of the stars and stripes of his shield painted on his arm.

Maria could help the sudden thrill of fear that she immediately quashed by coolly reloading and firing again. Each one of her bullets pinged off the metal arm before she fired towards the man's legs. Though she was an Agent, and proficient in hand-to-hand combat, she also knew that she was woefully out of the leagues of people like Romanov or super soldiers like Steve. Her primary skill set was that of an intelligence officer, not a field agent or asset.

She saw the Winter Soldier crouch, stopping his advancement before the louder report of a gun going off behind him signaled Carter's firearm bursting to life as the Soldier half turned, blocking a few of the bullets, but also allowing others to hit his kevlar body armor. This close to the blond-haired version of the Winter Soldier, Maria could see that it  _was_ Steve, but not the Steve that she knew. Half of his face was covered in a black balaclava reminiscent of the Winter Soldier of  _her_ reality, but his expressive eyes were utterly blank; as if the soul of Steve Rogers had been ripped out, more than likely through the many mindwipes she could imagine him going through. It was eerie, that she thought she could see the Winter Soldier in front of her, Steve trading places with Bucky Barnes; Barnes as the heroic super-soldiered Captain America while Steve was the Howling Commandos' Sergeant. For some odd reason, she thought she could also see that this Steve Rogers in front of her had ruthlessly killed his former best friend instead of sparing him, and was on a mission to apparently kill Howard, or even Carter judging by his entrance.

“Agent Hill!”

The warning came too late as Maria realized that she somehow been distracted by a mirage, an overlaid image, something that left her disoriented and gasping as the images cleared in time for her to see spots appear before her eyes. She made to raise her gun before she cried out in choking pain at the sudden flash agony of her gun arm being twisted. She dropped her gun before her fingers could be broken as she scrabbled against the cool metal vise-like grip on her throat. “S-Steve-” she tried as she pulled at the unmovable metal arm that had gripped her throat, lifting her high into the air. She wheezed, the spots in her vision growing darker as she could feel the grip slowly tightening-

And just as suddenly the grip loosened and she dropped unceremoniously to the floor, gasping and clawing at her throat. She violently coughed as she sucked down greedy lungfuls of sweet, sweet air, her chest heaving at the sudden intake of oxygen. The spots before her eyes still hovered in the air, but she managed to squint and look up in time to see the Winter Soldier that was Steve Rogers thrown unceremoniously  _into_ the wall by the actual Winter Soldier – James Buchanan Barnes.

“Is that-”

“It can't be-”

Maria ignored Howard and Carter's exclamations as Barnes charged at the Winter Soldier, slamming him back into the impact crater with a knee to the chest before punching him and ripping him from the wall. He threw him into one of the long couches, destroying it in an explosion of foam cushion and wood. She pushed herself up to a sitting position as she rubbed her throat, still feeling light-headed and dizzied from nearly dying in the metallic grip of the Winter Soldier. As their fight clashed near her, she groped for her gun, feeling the pull and tug of cuts and glass that had cut into her.

She closed her eyes briefly and tried to will the dizziness away as she heard further grunts and whines of mechanical arms destroying the penthouse. The sudden cry from the three behind the loveseat made her snap her eyes open and she nearly threw up from the sudden movement. She barely caught both Barnes and the Winter Soldier crashing into the massive television set, glass and electronic wiring shattering around them. The two traded punches, kicks, blocks, and throws with the speed and power that only was like a blur to Maria. She saw the three scrambled from their hiding spot, Carter, holding her gun out to try to find a weak spot; but Maria noticed that even then she looked quite stunned, as if she could not believe what she was seeing.

Maria finally felt the butt of her gun and grasped at it, grimacing at the shooting pain that traveled from her sprained wrist to her hand before reaching over with her good hand and picked it up.

“Agent Hill,” Jarvis' kind voice spoke up behind her before she felt hands pull at her shoulder and gently lifted her to her feet.

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” she tried to say, but only managed to whisper it. She could feel the grating hoarseness of her own voice against the bloom of pain from even trying to speak. She absently rubbed the bruises on her throat as she lifted her gun to try to find someway to help Barnes, or at least distract the Winter Soldier enough for Barnes to finish him.

As she watched the two fight, twisting and turning from blows or absorbing them and retaliating with their own, she could easily see that the Winter Soldier had the upper hand in the fight by sheer virtual of being better equipped than Barnes. Barnes was only dressed in his familiar black combat pants, but had been wearing just a tee-shirt. It was apparent that he must have been listening in and was aware of what had been happening, but had been watching from afar. He had only joined in when the Winter Soldier had attacked and while Maria was grateful for his intervention and saving her life, she knew that he was probably carrying much weaponry on him, having starting to discard them days ago on his current path to recovery.

After Steve had brought Barnes in from the cold a couple of months ago, she had noticed that he had stayed constantly armed, but in the past few weeks had only recently begun to actually wear something other than the grime-covered combat gear he had been found in. Though she had her doubts back then that the Winter Soldier had readily disarmed himself, his occasional lapses and attacking Steve not withstanding, it was only now that she realized the extent of how  _far_ James Barnes had gotten in his rehabilitation and reintegration into Steve's life. The fact that he was defending himself and trying also to pick the knives off of the Winter Soldier's tactical vest to use himself was telling.

And to Maria's trained eye – even with the blur of combatants tearing up the common area of the penthouse – Barnes was  _losing_ .

Maybe it was something to do with Barnes' last mission that he was supposed to have completed for Pierce's HYDRA, maybe it was the fact that he, like them, was shocked to see Steve's face plastered on a body with a metal arm that defined the  _Winter Soldier._ B ut she could not deny the fact that she could see that Barnes was slowly, but surely, losing. Maybe something had been rattled in Barnes' brain, making him hesitate in finishing his mission, maybe it was because it was Steve, maybe it was something else... Maria gritted her teeth and pushed herself from Jarvis' arms and took a dizzying step forward, trying to find someway to help Barnes.

She saw one knife go flying towards the wall, taken by Barnes for his use before the Winter Soldier kicked it out of his grip with a snap kick. Barnes retaliated, slamming his shoulder into the man's chest and twisted to the outside, looking for a knife to steal in the back before he was violently grabbed by the neck and slammed into the ground with a sweeping kick.

Maria fired, her bullets impacting the Winter Soldier, but he seemingly shrugged it off as he tightened his grip on Barnes' neck, the other man's arms rapidly punching and kicking to try to stave off the choke-hold.

Just as suddenly the Winter Soldier was knocked off kilter in the head by the impact of a very familiar red-white-blue shield. It rebounded off of a wall and Maria suddenly drew back as the blurred form of  _her_ Steve Rogers ran past them, catching his shield before slamming into the Winter Soldier. He caught him right in the middle and with a yell, carried him clear across the common area, shattering the glass overlooking the balcony before the two of them slammed into the metal railings that denoted the border of the balcony.

The bars held for a second before both gave way and Maria could not help the gasp that escaped from her lips, echoed behind her by Howard, Jarvis, and Carter, as the Winter Soldier and Steve fell-

Barnes pushed himself up and ran towards the edge of the balcony where he suddenly extended his metal arm and a grappling hook of sorts shot out of it and down towards where Steve and the Winter Soldier had fallen. There was half a second that Maria thought he had not caught anything, before Barnes suddenly braced himself against the bent and broken metal railings with his flesh-and-blood hand as he was half dragged across the floor. Maria ran forward, not caring about the broken glass she stepped on, as she saw Barnes push himself back and made to pull whatever he had caught with his grappling hook. A few seconds later, the familiar gloved arm and shield of Steve gripped the edges of the balcony before his exhausted face appeared and Maria breathed a sigh of relief.

“I had him on the ropes,” Barnes growled out quietly as Steve released the grappling hook that had saved his life.

“Sure you did Buck,” Steve gave him a tired grin before looking at her, “Hill...”

“Steve,” she returned a little hoarsely before stepping to the side to allow him to pull himself up. She took the opportunity to peer down the side of the Avengers Tower to see the smallest of specks - the glint of a metal arm telling her that it was the Winter Soldier - on of the green copper-lined rooftop of Grand Central Station. The speck did not move and she suspected that he had died. However, just as she was watching, she thought she saw the silvery arm slowly fade away and disappear from her eyes before she blinked and rubbed at them.

“Steve, the Winter Soldier-”

“He's gone, right?” Steve approached her and also peered down, a frown on his face, “that's what the Red Skull me did too after I killed him.”

“But...”

“I don't know, Tony might know, but I did see another flash forward, alternate reality, something that wasn't...the here and now,” Steve said quietly as they both drew back and Maria glanced up at him, wondering what he was talking about.

However, Steve did not face her as he answered and instead looked at Barnes who was staring at him with a seemingly blank, but intense look. “I saw you, Bucky, watching from afar as the Avengers fought some robot and his drones named Ultron. You were there for support, sent by Fury, but you didn't want me to know you were there. You hadn't come in after the Helicarrier like you did, and instead, stayed away, watching me, watching the others. You were still...wrestling with your memories, programming, something, but you knew that you were there to help and you did. You killed several of the drones and even scored a hit on Ultron with your rifle and I was looking for you, but you disappeared after the fight...after we won.”

“Director Fury is dead,” Barnes stated and Steve nodded.

“Yeah, which makes me think it's another reality's memories, or maybe some alternate future that we avoided,” Steve said and Maria knew that Steve was horrible at lying, but it seemed that Barnes believed him – or like the rest of them, was still in a state of numbed shock at what had just happened that no one was reading into anyone's words too closely.

“Wait,” she caught Steve's previous words, “another flash forward?”

“Tony and I got a...vision of sorts before the Red Skull's body disappeared,” Steve grimaced before tapping his ear, unwilling to explain further, “Tony? Yeah...situation's contained here. It...was another me...just...yeah, I'm fine.” He glanced at them, “Are you all okay?”

“We will be,” Carter stepped forward, still pale looking, but her eyes shone with determination, “you, however, are injured, as are you, Agent Hill, and...” She turned to stare at Barnes who met her look unflinchingly, seemingly not even recognizing her and Maria saw her take a deep breath and let it out quietly as she stared at him. “It's really you, isn't it Sergeant Barnes.”

“...Ma'am,” Barnes' reply was so quiet that Maria barely heard it over the distant roar of New York traffic and the wind this high up in the air, but something in Carter's gaze softened before she nodded once.

A sad smile appeared on her face and she turned to Steve, “There's a story behind this, isn't there? And you can't tell me because of the time loop.”

Steve reluctantly nodded, his face crumpling into something so personal that Maria suddenly felt like she was an outsider listening into a very intense and private conversation. She turned away, trying to somehow give the three of them their privacy on the balcony, but the crackle of her own radio coming back to life followed the familiar hum that had gotten so common place in the common area, alerted her that JARVIS had managed to reroute and repair the damage done by the Winter Soldier's EMP.

She tapped her ear as she stepped away, “Stark, you copy?” she asked, hoping that it gave the three a chance to talk, but instead, she heard Carter's footsteps behind her followed by the thump of Steve's boots. Barnes' quiet tread joined them and it was only because she suspected that he deliberately stepped on the broken glass to let them know that he was coming in. She suppose that working with three consummate professionals meant that they would keep their personal feelings to themselves until the mission was over.

“Yeah, loud and clear,” Stark's voice boomed and sounded a bit electronically warped as the speakers in the room transmitted his voice. “Hey, Hill, get my Dad on the line, I need to talk to him about something I found here-”

“Do you need me back there Tony?” Steve touched his own ear and Maria realized that he sounded a little winded. Just how fast did Steve run from the lower east side to the Avengers Tower and even up it to get here?

“Nah, just get Dad on the line, not too sure of what I'm seeing here, would like his help,” Tony's voice boomed and Maria saw Howard blinked and stare up at the speakers at his words. She had to smile a little at the fact that the 1946-Howard was more than likely  _not_ used to hearing the words 'Dad' come out of anyone's mouth when it came to him.

“Agent Hill, I have not been able to repair the external microphones at the moment. It seems that the initial EMP has damaged the circuitry beyond my capabilities,” JARVIS' tinned voice spoke up and Maria nodded before taking her earpiece off of her own ear.

She stepped around the debris and handed it to Howard, “Here, use mine. I'll get a spare one from my office downstairs.” She also needed a massive ice pack and several pills ibuprofen along with a cervical collar, but those thoughts she kept to herself as she immediately headed out of the common room. Maybe Steve would not tell Howard, Carter, and Jarvis the whole story about Sergeant Barnes' fate after he fell from the train in 1945, but at least hoped that they could come to terms with what had happened while she was gone.

* * *

Even though the sun was shining, the windows were so stained had a layer of grimy, dirty film on it, that there was little light shining through as Tony climbed the stairs to the brownstone. His sensors were pointing him to the strongest source of the anomalous reading he had initially scanned for and gotten. “J, it's the same as the one that brought Dad and the others here, right?” he asked as he kept an eye out with his HUD for any more hostile forces.

The perimeter outside of the brownstone was secured by Sergeant Sousa and his team and he left strict orders for no one to enter until he gave the all-clear. It turned out that Sousa had been one of the responding officers that Steve had initially given orders to during the battle of New York and also apparently an ally on the NYPD against those who thought the Avengers were a bunch of loose cannons after the fall of SHIELD.

“It is a ninety-eight percent match, sir,” JARVIS replied, “I do not detect another metallic object similar to the 0-8-4 though.”

“Nothing so far right?” he asked as he cleared another room and continued on, the creak of wooden floorboards holding the weight of his suit. The building was abandoned, but there was something oddly familiar about it. He did not know why, but as he stared at the paints, the floorboards, even the door and some of the old curtains, posters, and furniture left behind, he could not help but feel a sense of deja vu about the building.

“Tony, where are you?” his father's voice suddenly crackled over his headset, “Agent Hill gave me her earpiece. She says she's got a spare. JARVIS says that the damage to the...external speakers, right? The external speakers are beyond his capabilities for repair and rerouting.”

“Must be some EMP then,” Tony commented sourly.

There was a slight sound of something rubbing against another microphone before Steve's voice came over, “Bucky says...he had been given a choice between a grappling hook or EMP blast when they, uh, gave him the arm...”

Tony paused, staring at nothing in particular as he digested what Steve had relayed. “Excuse me for a second,” he said politely before muting his microphone.

He took a deep long breath and let it out slowly, trying to dissipate the anger that had boiled up in him at that statement. He wanted to swear, wanted to curse to the high heavens for what HYDRA had done to Barnes, but instead, he focused his anger and let it out slowly. HYDRA had killed his parents, made it look like an accident. They had taken Steve's best friend and turned him into a remorseless killing machine. They had destroyed his father and Peggy Carter's legacy by infiltrating it from the start. They were  _dead_ , and though Tony was aware that cutting the head off of one would result in growing another, he was determined to burn the stump so that no more heads would ever grow from the monster that was HYDRA. This whole business with fighting the Red Skull who had somehow possessed Steve's body was hitting him a little too close at the moment. He took another deep breath and released it slowly, forcing himself to focus back on the task at hand.

He unmuted his microphone and cleared his throat, “I like working with my hands. More things for me to fix.”

There was an audible groan of annoyance from Steve over the microphone and Tony grinned as he resumed his search. “So, to answer your question, I'm at a brownstone near the corner of Henry and Grant Streets-”

“Is there a knife score on the seventh floor of the stairs near the second door from the stairs-”

“Uh, hang on,” he looked up to see two more floors above him and hurried up the stairs before checking the railings where Howard had indicated to see that indeed there was a deep score of sorts. In fact, it looked well worn and rubbed in; the roughened edges already smoothed out by years and years of people touching the hand rails. “It's kind of large, looks like it's been rubbed over several times-”

“...Yeah...” Howard exhaled in a tone that Tony did not recognize his father ever used, er, future father. “That's what I thought. Um...go to the apartment four doors away from that.”

“The readings are definitely stronger here,” he commented as he followed the other man's orders and arrived at what looked like a faded green-blue painted door. There was the faint imprint of the number six on the door and the knob was missing. He pushed it open to find the apartment empty, a few broken glass scattered along the floors. “All right...I'm in, apartment six...seventh floor.”

“There's two bedrooms from the main common area, right?”

“Yeah,” Tony saw two tiny bedrooms that could barely fit twin-sized beds let alone a family.

“One's got a radiator that's visible from the main room, right?”

“Yeah, I see it,” he spotted the remnants of an old looking cast iron radiator from where he was standing. He held out is hand, surprised to see a spike in the tachyon readings. “Huh,” he commented absently, “they're really strong...like there's something in there.”

“Tony, if it's an 0-8-4-”

“Yeah, I know, don't touch it or else I might end up in some weird-ass future where we're all dancing seals and Loki turned the streets into cotton candy,” Tony cut Steve off and heard the faint snort of amusement in reply.

“The last two panels on the radiator are fake. I...built a convection system where the heat exchange doesn't affect the last two panels. Stashed all kinds of things in there, money, guns...things I didn't want people finding out until...”

“You...” Tony trailed off as he knelt down and gently tugged at the last two panels. He realized that this apartment...this brownstone...this was where his father  _grew_ up.

Tony paused for a second at the revelation. He had always known that his father had made his money through government contracts and sheet determination, building the Stark Industries empire through the war and by weapons contracts. But even then, he himself had never really  _asked_ about his father's childhood. When he had asked about his grandparents, he had only known his mother's parents, his father saying that his own had died before the war. Pictures of his father in his childhood were likewise almost non-existent, the earliest ones of him was him working with Dr. Erskine on Project Rebirth. Even then, most of his early pictures were with the SSR and the Howling Commandos. Never did he thought his father was trying to erase his past, or even hide it – he had never considered that until now.

Based on his knowledge of old New York before gentrification had really set in, the lower east side was home to a lot of the immigrant population, shirtwaist factories, and the like. The fact that his father had all but pointed out his  _childhood_ home to him and directed him to here... Tony could not even begin to comprehend what his father had to do to get himself out of the neighborhood and become a self-made man.

He snapped out of his thoughts as he pried open the panels and to his surprise, saw that it was mostly empty save for a few sheets of faded and yellowed paper. “I...uh, I found...something,” he swallowed as he felt his mouth dry up, still reeling from the revelation.

“Wait...y-you did?” Howard sounded confused and Tony shook his head again, trying to clear his previous thoughts from his head. “I didn't think I left anything in there after all these years, not that-”

“Uh, yeah, there's a few pieces of paper-holy shit...” he had unfolded the papers and saw a bunch of formulas and what looked like a cipher code of sorts that he vaguely recognize.

“Sir, some of the cipher matches that of what was in the 0-8-4's notes that Director Coulson had sent with the object in question,” JARVIS' voice piped up and Tony blinked.

He stared down at the paper he was holding, faded and yellowed from time and age in the radiator. It was a miracle that it had not been subjected to the ravages of time sitting in the cast iron radiator. He would have thought that a fire or something would have destroyed it by now; thought that someone would have stolen it or something- _Wait a minute...T_ ony's thought screeched to a halt as he stared down at the paper. “J, this has the tachyon readings right? A very high concentration of it, right?”

“Yes sir,” his A.I. confirmed.

“Stable time loop?” he guessed as he held the thing out and shook it. Maybe it was alive...

“Possibly sir,” JARVIS replied, “there is no way of determining it-”

“But there could be,” Howard cut in thoughtfully, “I mean, if it was here and I didn't know about it until now, maybe it's proof that we did get back to our time and I just put it there and left it-”

“-So what, that we could conveniently find it now? Of all times-”

“-You said so yourself that somehow it's a stable time loop-”

“But we don't know that, Dad,” Tony shook his head, “for all we know you could be stuck here for all time-”

“But then how do you exist?”

“I-” Tony blanched and stopped as he felt faint, “no, no, no I am not having this conversation with _you_ of all people because even _my_ genius brain can't handle this much time speculation and whatnot going on. No Grandfather Theories, nothing like that.”

“Maybe somehow I got hold of it, took it back, but didn't know what it was, but knew it needed to be kept safe?” Howard suggested and Tony shook his head again.

“But that would imply that somehow you've forgotten what's been happening here and you've went back in time with no memory of what's going on-”

“Tony, Peggy...did say that she knew of this day, but didn't remember what was so special about it...” Steve cut in quietly and Tony fell silent, pondering his friend's words. There was one giant factor that prevented him from readily believing what Steve had relayed from an older Peggy Carter – namely her dementia. Stark Industries had a small devoted group dedicated to check and hopefully reverse Peggy Carter's condition, and the hospice she was at was paid for in full by Stark Industries so that her children and grandchildren would never have to worry about her care. But for all of the medical and scientific advances, there was no cure or significant treatment plan that could reverse a lot of the dementia that Peggy suffered from. It was still a miracle that they had managed to keep her sharp a tack on some days, though he supposed Steve's visits had something to do with that also.

“It's at least something that could help maybe get them home,” he said before something pinged on his HUD. “JARVIS, what's up buddy?”

“Sir, I have been running a background trace of the tachyon fields in which the HYDRA creatures as well as the Red Skull had come from and I believe it is a match to what is in your hands,” JARVIS replied and Tony wrinkled his brow, a little confused as to what his A.I. just said.

“Come again?”

“Sir, I believe that the paper you have in your hands is part of a time rift that apparently is connected to the 0-8-4,” JARVIS replied, “it would explain why the Red Skull and the others first appeared here and why the Winter Soldier appeared at the Tower.”

“There's a bad news to all of this, isn't there?”

“Yes sir,” the A.I. sounded regretful, “I believe that the time rift, if you will, is expanding. The tachyon particles have grown exponentially in a field of sorts that is not part of the visible spectrum, but can be read from the radiation spectrometers. It was originally contained when Mr. Jarvis, Agent Carter, and Mr. Stark arrived, but then it seemed to have expanded since then. It seems stabilized for now-”

“But it'll probably expand again...J, how many hours since our guests arrived to when the Red Skull was first reported here?”

“Twenty-one hours and sixteen minutes since their arrival,” JARVIS replied and Tony blew out a quiet breath.

“All right then...” he muttered mostly to himself.

“Tony, want to explain for those of us who don't follow the laws of time travel here?” Steve spoke up, sounding extremely confused.

“I think we've got less than twenty-four hours before we probably find variations of yourself, or even worst, something else coming through whatever that...thing is,” Howard replied and Tony nodded, even though he knew no one could see it.

“Yeah, I'm headed back. Dad, meet me in the workshop. It's got your hand writing on it, so maybe you know what you wrote down whenever you wrote it,” Tony said as he folded the piece of paper gently in his hands and put it in a small slot near the hip side of his suit. They had less than a full day to figure out how to reverse the 0-8-4, if it could be reversed, and hopefully send the three time travelers back to their time, or even just close the thing so that variations of Steve Rogers or even others could not come through and affect this world.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original title for this part was supposed to be "Window of Opportunity," but I felt like it referenced the light-hearted (and hilariously funny episode - even though it had a slightly downer ending), which would not have matched the mood of this chapter. So it got changed to "Before I Sleep" which is a far more somber episode in terms of tone.


	7. Part 6 - Moebius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title references "Stargate SG-1" Season 8 episode.

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Part 6 – Moebius_

 

The murmur of quiet voices in what was left of the common area of the penthouse drew Steve away from his previous destination of the kitchen. He peered quietly into the area as a wistful smile flitted across his lips. From his vantage point, the three people he loved the most were sitting in a haphazard circle amongst what was left of the unbroken furniture. There were a few others he wished could have been among the three, counting them as those he cared for and loved the most, but he knew that at least one of them was somewhere trying to find who she was after everything that had happened. Still, it was nice to see Peggy sitting across from Bucky and Sam Wilson facing both. Sam had arrived a little over an hour after they had started to clean up, apologetic for his delay, but he had also immediately helped Jarvis patch them up using his expertise as a field medic and pararescue.

Maria needed the most attention, her collarbone fractured along with hairline cracks along her neck. She was currently on bedrest with strict instructions from Sam to JARVIS that she stayed in bed. The rest of them had been bandaged up, but even they had been given instructions to not over exert themselves nor do any heavy lifting until their wounds healed.

For Steve, he knew it would be more than likely another couple of hours before he would be free to do whatever he wanted. He could already feel the itch of new skin scabbing over under the bandages and dared not scratch it. He knew back from his mother's days at the TB ward and also in the other hospital rounds she occasional did, that the itching was a sign of healing, and in his case, to never scratch at it. He had managed not to each time he got cuts and scrapes, but for some odd reason, the super soldier serum seemingly enhanced it, making it a little bit harder to resist the urge to pick at the newly formed skin and scabs. He supposed that it was the serum's way of accelerating his healing. At least the saving grace was that it healed a lot faster than waiting several days before he was injected with the serum.

Treating Bucky had been a lot harder than treating himself, Tony, and the others. For one thing, he knew that Bucky had refused all medical care since he had brought him back from the cold. But now, as he saw Sam quietly talking with Bucky, his best friend had bandages wrapped around his arms and one on his neck; a sign that Bucky had finally allowed Sam to treat him.

He did not know what they were talking about, their voices too quiet for even his enhanced hearing to pick up, but it seemed like Peggy was listening intently to whatever Sam was saying and to his surprise, also with Bucky's quiet answers. He wanted to tell her that Bucky survived his fall from Zola's train, that he was held captive somewhere in HYDRA's grasp in 1946. He wanted to tell her to rescue his best friend when she went back to his time; he wanted to tell her all of that, but he also wondered if he did, would he end up pulling a far worst future for himself, for Tony, for everyone?

He would do _anything_ to make sure Bucky was safe, maybe even change the future so that his best friend would not have to suffer so much pain and trauma. But at the same time, he was also aware of the here and now – that he did not tell Peggy, Howard, or Jarvis where Bucky was because Bucky existed in the here and now. That he himself existed in the here and now with the knowledge that he did not _tell_ them. It was a paradox of sorts and Steve was starting to realize how complicated the whole thing was about time travel. He still did not get half of what Tony or even Howard had said, but what he understood was that there were far worst present, or even better ones, than the one he was living in right now. The Red Skull wearing his face or even himself as the Winter Soldier proved that.

Sam must have also been warned about the consequences of a time paradox or whatever it was Tony had called it because he had seen Tony talking to Sam as soon as he had arrived. At the same time, a very small part of Steve _hoped_ that Sam told Peggy where Bucky had fallen in an effort to perhaps find him when she did return to her time period. He wanted nothing more than his friends to be happy and did not want them to suffer.

“He survived the fall from Zola's train, didn't he?” he glanced back to see Howard ambling towards him, having stepped off of the elevator with his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks.

“Yeah...” Steve made room for Howard to peer in on the three as he stood next to him.

“I'm still going with the theory that Peggy, Jarvis, and I aren't going to remember any of this when we get back,” Howard commented with a small shrug, “I mean, the fact that we saw him and things are still seemingly playing out like nothing's changed gives weight that it's really a stable time loop and that we don't remember any of this. Or will remember...eh, time travel messes with your tenses.” He cracked a crooked smile and Steve could not help but respond with his own.

“Taking a break?” he asked.

“Tony's dame, er, lady friend, I guess is the nomenclature these days, shoved me out with orders to find something to eat before I pass out while making sure that Tony doesn't pass out from the lack of food and rest,” the crooked smile grew a little wistful, “gotta admit, she is one hell of an impressive woman, that Pepper Potts.”

“Howard...” Steve looked at his friend who flashed him a grin. Pepper had arrived shortly after Sam, having flown in as soon as the news had started to broadcast the two of them fighting in the streets of New York City.

“Come on Steve, you know me,” Howard lifted his hands from his pockets to show that he was kidding, “besides, it _was_ nice to meet her. The fact that she's able to run Stark Industries with _branches_ all over the world, has to be someone that can handle Tony.” He puffed out his chest a little, “Still, as Tony's future Dad, I approve.”

Steve laughed quietly at that statement and saw Howard nod with a wide smile on his face, before shaking his head, “Took you long enough to laugh pal. You look like you've watched too many war reels since we've arrived.”

Steve had no answer for that as he nodded bracingly and scuffed his feet in an absent manner. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the smile dim a little and Howard sighed. His shoulders sagged as he shook his head, a more serious expression on his face.

“So far, it seems like it's easier for us to deal with you alive than for you to deal with us alive...well...Peg's alive, but me and Jarvis...dead,” Howard chewed his lower lip and looked away.

“I was found three years ago,” Steve started quietly, “given files that said that pretty much all of the Commandos were dead and everyone that I knew, except Peggy, was dead.”

“Yeah...been only a year for us,” Howard murmured, “not really long when you look at it.”

Steve immediately picked up on the sourness in Howard's voice and let loose a sigh of his own, “Howard, I'd tell you if-”

“What, don't want to be rescued? From where ever you crash landed the _Valkyrie_ ? Don't want to see us so soon after the war? She's been _heartbroken_ about you, Steve. I can't help her, because I can't help myself! You were the best thing in our lives! You were the best thing in my life! You were something _good_ that didn't start all of this stupid nonsense with the SSR coming after me!”

“Wait,” Steve frowned, “I know the government thinks you're selling stuff to the black market, but the SSR is also coming after you? For what?”

Howard rolled his eyes and looked annoyed, “Same thing government's is accusing me of. Someone broke into my vault, well, one of my many ones, but I had one where I stored the bad weapons, the ones that don't really work, and someone stole them. The government's given the SSR's a lot of latitude on this, thinking I've been selling them on the black market-”

“But that's not true-”

“I know! This is _me_ , we're talking about. I don't sell my weapons on the black market-”

“Why would they think that-”

“Someone at the SSR's got a bee up their bonnet and thinks that I'm double dealing with the Russians, and I basically can't show up and tell them that it's not me,” Howard looked frustrated as he raked a hand through his hair.

“Why not?” Steve asked, confused.

“They won't believe me! I mean seriously, I didn't tell Colonel, well, now General Phillips about my unused weapons vault and I've got other military contracts besides that of the SSR to keep my company afloat,” he gestured with a chin to him, “you of all people should know that parts of the government don't get along well with the others. Plus, this new character in town, Leviathan's, been implicating me that I've sold weapons to them.”

“Leviathan? Like maybe a HYDRA offshoot?” he had read the history and files on the formation of SHIELD from the SSR, but there had been vague mentions and generalizations involved. Fury had said that the original mission reports filed back then had been lost or burned up in a fire.

“I don't know Steve,” Howard sighed, “my reputation's been shot and Peggy's been trying to help, but I really can't show my face anywhere without getting arrested. If that happens...”

“Stark Industries will be lost,” Steve finished for him, and Howard nodded slightly, looking crestfallen. Ever since he had learned that Howard was a self-made man, a Lower East Side kid who pulled himself from poverty to being the richest and most brilliant weapons contractor he had ever seen – Tony not withstanding – he understood that Stark Industries was everything to him. He also understood that if he went back and vouched for Howard, he could easily clear his name, steer the men of the SSR in the right direction and nip the Leviathan problem in the bud before it became anything more for the SSR. He could easily help form SHIELD, ensuring that Zola and other HYDRA sympathizers would not grow a parasite in the organization that was founded by his friends. He could do that...

“...If you find me where I crashed, I won't remember any of this...” he said quietly and Howard flashed a brief bitter smile. “I can't come back with you because of that entropic...whatever thing...”

“Steve, I don't care,” he said, “you'd just be home. You'd make her happy, you'd make all of us happy.” He gestured with his chin again towards where she was sitting, staring at Sam who was making a hand motion of sorts, “She's pretty furious with me right now. I probably deserved it, but still...couldn't just see the SSR waste it.”

“The vial of my blood?” he asked.

“Had her steal what I called the Blitzkrieg Button. I told her it was designed to knock out the power in any city by blowing the boxes in one go. Didn't know how to turn the power back on though. Said it was probably the most dangerous weapon I created and that I didn't want New York to accidentally get blown with that thing. I told her to bring it to me, but she looked inside it and well,” he shrugged again, his smile still bitter, but grim, “it had the last vial of your blood in it.”

“What-”

“Happened to the others?” Howard shook his head, “the U.S. Government tried to waste it by creating more super soldiers. Burned right through their stockpile. I...was given one of your vials since I was part of Project Rebirth. Didn't want the government to create more super soldiers if they were going to be this ruthless about their weapons programs.”

Steve sensed that there was something Howard was hiding and stared at him with a sideways look that Howard seemed to dodge before sighing again, “All right, all right. Some of the weapons I put into that vault were for a very good reason, okay? You can't tell Peggy this...it's hard enough that she hates me for lying to her about that. Project Rebirth was probably the only good thing that came out of this war. The Manhattan Project along with all of my other contracts? Nothing good came out of those...just...death.” He blinked hard and looked away, “Too much death.”

Steve opened his mouth to say that it was not Howard's fault, but the man interrupted him before he could get a word out. “Project Rebirth...Phillips always wanted an army of super soldiers, but there's always something inherently wrong with making, building, creating an offensive weapon. If Phillips got his way, we would have been looking at an army of _Red Skulls_ .” Howard looked at him square in the eye, “Everything I've touched is pretty much death incarnate. Then you came along and reminded me that not everything is war and death. Steve, you gave us hope, you gave _me_ hope.”

Steve stared back, his mouth a thin line as he felt his insides twist a little in longing. He wanted to go back with them, wanted to- “I want to go back. I want to...”

“Entropic cascade failure,” the wistfully bitter smile was back on Howard's lips, “I know, but can't you tell me where-”

Steve glanced over to where Bucky was, melancholy filling him, “Bucky will still be under his control, still missing...and I won't remember. I'll still think he's dead...”

“We could write it down, where Bucky is, where he'll be or whatever. That cipher, it's got my hand writing on it, so obviously I wrote it down-”

“When,” Steve was a little surprised at how steady his own voice was as he turned back to face Howard, “when did you write it?”

“I...uh,” Howard shook his head, “I don't know, but I know my own hand writing-”

Steve only smiled sadly at his friend's answer as Howard sighed and ran his hand through his hair again. “Nothing I'm saying is going to convince you to come back with us or at least give me your location so I can find you, right?” He shook his head as Howard blew out a quiet breath, “All right then...just...tell me this. Are you happy here? Not with us here, I mean, but just in general?”

He opened his mouth to say that he was, but closed it after realizing that he was about to give the answer that he had given by rote to Sam when he first met him. It was the same answer he had given on press tours, interviews, mixing it up a little, but nonetheless the same answer. A few seconds of silence passed before he answered honestly, “I...don't know. I mean, seeing you, Peggy, even Jarvis here...it's been a bit overwhelming.”

His friend smiled briefly, “You have Bucky here at least. And Peggy's not dead.” There was something in Howard's expression that Steve thought was a longing of sorts, but he supposed it was because Howard was still reeling from the fact that he had died long before they had found him on ice and did not get a chance to see him again.

“Bucky's...been through a lot,” Steve glanced back at the trio sitting in the remnants of the common area.

Howard snorted quietly, “Tell me about it pal. And you really can't tell me anything about that, right?”

“I...really want to, but-”

“Potential ramifications of destabilizing the time space continuum too great, I get it,” Howard replied a little flippantly, but his nod told Steve that he understood instead of being dismissive about it, “still, at least you have someone who knows you with you.”

The corner of Steve's lips twitched up in a small smile as his friend continued, “I definitely like the improvements in the uniform, segmented body armor that has some kind of advance weave in it, and your fighting style's changed a little-”

“I was given some modern combat training by the agency Maria worked for-” he could easily tell that the conversation was moving out of more dangerous waters and let Howard take the lead.

“Agent Hill your dame, er, girl, er, lady friend-” Howard paused as Steve shook his head, feeling a little bit of warmth on his face, “seriously? No? Come on pal. No...fonduing?”

“Howard-” Steve blanched at his friend's words and ribbing and saw a smile appear on his face.

“Just kidding. Geez, nice to know some things haven't changed. Wow, you-”

“Don't you start, Howard. I've got Natasha already asking me to ask after this nurse who's not a nurse-”

“Oh, so there _is_ someone- And who is this _Natasha_ -”

“No, not like that,” Steve realized that he had dug himself into a hole and shook his head, “Sharon's not like that-”

“Sharon, okay...I knew a few Sharons. A red-head, one was a blonde...I think-”

Steve suddenly wanted to dig down several levels of the Tower and not come out before Howard clapped him on his back, a laugh escaping his lips. “Steve, you're still not so good at this whole thing with women, aren't you?”

He gave him a sideways glare which only got another laugh out of Howard, but he was saved from further harassment as the elevators dinged behind them and both turned to see Pepper, Tony, and Jarvis walking out. Pepper was discreetly shepherding Tony towards the direction of the kitchens while talking with Jarvis. The three stopped as they saw them and Steve immediately did not like the mischievous glint in Tony's eyes as he still felt the warmth of embarrassment on his cheeks.

“Dad,” Tony dragged out the middle of the word, “what did you do?”

Steve was prepared for Howard to say something teasing about him, but instead Howard only shrugged, “Confirming that Steve still loves Peggy, that's all.”

“Oh,” the glint in Tony's eyes disappeared as he seemingly accepted Howard's answer before continuing on his way, “knew that, still pretty sweet in this day and age. Where's the pot of coffee-”

“Coffee is not food, Tony,” Pepper interrupted with a practiced look.

“But you drink it like I do-”

“I _only_ drink it when I have meetings and negotiations-”

“Which is at least five times a day, Pep. I still remember-”

“It's up to seven now,” Pepper interrupted again with the same smile before looking at them, “Mr. Jarvis offered to make sandwiches for snacks before I allow Tony to get back to work down stairs. Would you care to join us?”

“Ms. Potts, always,” Steve was still amazed at how fast Howard could turn on the charm as he brushed past him. He also saw the eye-roll Tony directed at his father and realized that he had forgotten that Howard was one of the few who did not tease him as much as Bucky or the other Commandos did whenever Peggy or any other dame was involved. Though he knew all of them, especially Bucky for all of his efforts at setting up him on dates, did not mean any harm, he was still appreciative of Howard's efforts – especially right after Peggy had caught him kissing Private Lorraine.

He followed them, taking the moment for what it was and part of him wishing that it would never end.

* * *

It was a few hours later that Steve found himself outside on the balcony once more. The metal railings that had been broken in his fight with the Winter Soldier had been somewhat bent back into shape by him a few seconds ago. It was going to need some welding, but it looked sturdy enough as leaned on another section, watching the ebb and flow of traffic across the city. There was something rhythmically fascinating seeing the cars stop at stop lights and go, following the traffic lines – or on the occasion, some crazy driver that was obviously _not_ from the city break traffic lines. Whenever the summer nights at his apartment back in 1940s Brooklyn had been too stuffy and oppressive for his lungs, he would go to the rooftop and watch the traffic.

“I'm beginning to think that this device, whatever it is, was made to give others a chance to say proper goodbyes,” Peggy's quiet voice behind him made him turn a little to see her stepping carefully around broken glass. He shifted over a little to let her join him as she also leaned against the rails.

“Seems kind of cruel, whoever made it, to make it do that,” he commented absently, but he could not deny that he had been thinking along the same lines since Tony had returned with what looked like a translation or something regarding the cipher written on the 0-8-4.

“It does, doesn't it?” she frowned a little before turning to look out at the cityscape.

He glanced down at her and saw that she looked exhausted, worn, drained of almost all vitality even though he knew she had eaten at least an Edwin Jarvis-made sandwich a few hours ago. “Did you...”

“Yes,” she closed her eyes for a few seconds and nodded before opening them again, “the entropic cascade failure has been hitting me a lot faster in the last few hours. Howard thinks there might be a pattern of sorts, but he also thinks it might be related to the alternate realities that seem to have come through.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, knowing that there was not much else he could say or do. The last time he had tried to hold her hand, to let her know that he was here, he had been thrown into the coffee table and had broken it.

“I can't deny that it hurts each time it happens,” she glanced at him with a wan smile on her face before looking back out at the cityscape, “but it does feel...odd each time. I see glimpses of what I could be, should have been, maybe like what you said you saw when you saw bits and pieces of alternate realities?”

“It was like I suddenly lived in a body that wasn't my own. Like it took me a moment to figure out how to work the body, similar to after Dr. Erskine hit me with the vita rays and I felt myself...growing,” he realized that he could not tell her that he had been in excruciating _agony_ throughout that process. It was like someone had cut him open and decided to stretch every single one of his muscles to the fullest without even allowing him a moment to scream. In the hazy aftermath before the HYDRA spy had killed Dr. Erskine, he felt like he had been transplanted into a body that was not quite working right, that he had to re-learn how to use his limbs.

“Somewhat shared common experience now,” the smile turned rueful on her lips as they fell into amicable silence. She ducked her head down and stared at her hands. “Steve...”

And just like that, Steve suddenly felt like someone was crushing his heart, squeezing it so tight that it hurt to even draw a sliver of breath as he looked at her. “I don't want you to leave,” he blurted out in a rush and saw her look at him in surprise. “I...I don't want you to leave...” he repeated much more slowly and quietly before he bit his lip, “but...I don't want you to die either...”

She looked at him for a long moment before she gently reached up and cradled his cheek. He leaned a little into her touch, feeling the rough callouses of her fingers and palm from her years on the battlefield as well as her work as an agent of the SSR. Most other women he knew had soft hands, but hers were always different and somehow, he liked it. Even now, he could feel her inner strength across her gentle touch. The corner of his lips turned up in a wistful, sad smile.

“I want you to be happy,” she said, rubbing a thumb across his cheekbones, “like you told me before that I was happy, that I had lived a full life in the here and now.”

“Peggy-”

“Your friend Sam, while I was talking with him and Sergeant Barnes-” Steve had to smile a little at how Peggy called Bucky; always 'Sergeant Barnes' and never James, Bucky, or even just plain Barnes. He had suspected that it was Peggy's own way of annoying Bucky whenever they were near each other – a long on-going payback for Bucky trying flirt with her in the pub in London. He had also suspected Bucky found it hilariously endearing considering that he knew that Peggy was off-limits, but never got to ask his best friend back then.

“-alluded to a rough few years you've been having since you were thawed out of the ice,” she continued, “and it's something I've noticed since we've arrived-”

“Peggy-” the smile faded from Steve's lips as he protested. He did not want her to worry about him-

“Steve,” she interrupted him again, moving her hand down to his shoulder and squeezed it gently, “I want you to also be happy. Live your life to the fullest, like I did, or I will-” She laughed lightly and Steve had to smile a little at her wording, but still felt like someone was squeezing his heart to tiny pieces. She was trying to let him go.

“...Not the first time a girl's rejected me,” he murmured quietly, trying to make a small joke and saw the smile fade a little on Peggy's lips as it fell a bit flat.

She shook her head. “I'm not rejecting you, I'm setting you free,” she said firmly and he nodded. The words felt a little hollow to his ears, but he still took them for what it was. Her grip tightened on his shoulder, “Steve, listen. I'm not giving up on you. I don't care how long it'll take, or even if the future is already set in stone, I will see you again. I will find you. Even if I don't remember where you crashed, I'll have Howard, I'll have the SSR, I'll have everyone looking for you.

“You've done so much for everyone else, for me, for Howard...” she took a deep breath and for the first time, Steve saw her lips trembling and unshed tears forming in her eyes. He realized that this was probably as hard for her as it was for him, that she was holding back as much as he was. She did not want to leave, she wanted him to come back with them too, but they both knew that if either stayed in their respective time periods, they would eventually die. Then...all would be for naught.

He did not know what made him do it, but he suddenly swept her up in his arms and embraced her tightly, burying his face into her hair, breathing in deeply. “Thank you, Peggy Carter,” he whispered into her hair as he felt a spot of wetness on his own shoulder and knew that she was crying. “I'll always love you,” he said quietly and felt her nod.

“Goodbye, my love,” she replied as she returned his embrace. For the two of them, time seem to stop, if only for the moment of a long goodbye. But for Steve, it was enough.

* * *

Tony rubbed his eyes, blinking the gummy feeling out of them as he stared at the hard-light projection of the cipher he had found on the lower east side. He had JARVIS immediately scan it once he had gotten back before running through an assortment of algorithms and code-breaking programs while he had taken a break on Pepper's insistence, but nothing had cracked it. Howard was taking the more physical route, holding the actual yellowed paper and making his own notes and ideas on another separate sheet – a bit more used to writing things down instead of using the hard-light technology he had.

“Anything?” he asked as he rubbed his eyes again and considered making another pot of coffee. However, a quick glance at Dummy, the first robot he had created of the three arms he owned, near the pot dissuaded him from the effort. His last pot had shattered all over the floor when Dummy had happily chirped after Howard had scratched him on a particularly sensitive ball joint. Tony did not think it was an accident that made Dummy drop the pot, even though his father had wanted coffee too.

There was a grunt from Howard's side of the room and Tony glanced over to see his father with a frown on his youthful face as he made marks on the paper he had in front of him. For a moment, Tony was struck at how eerie Howard looked to the image he distinctly remembered about his father – working at his home office in front of his desk, nose buried deep in paper work. Occasionally he was on the phone too, shouting at someone, but he was always writing something down onto a pad or even a notebook. Tony remembered vaguely sometimes seeing mathematical formulas he did not quite get until he had been enrolled in the private academies and then MIT. Sometimes he remembered seeing vague shapes, outlines of weapons or designs that he now knew to be most of Stark Industries' prototypes – weapons for the military contracts that S.I. always had.

Seeing Howard here and now, looking twenty-something years younger than he remembered, made him feel a little guilty. His earlier comparison of Howard from 1946 to the Howard he remembered and grew up with had been unfair. He had been excited to show Howard everything about the 21 st  century, but realized that it had also been tinged with his own prejudices and memories of his father. While Howard had been verily impressed with what he had shown, Tony had _wanted_ him to say certain words, certain things about what he had shown, had wanted that approval from his _father_ – had expected it really. And when those words did not come to fruition, he had gotten irrationally angry and had lashed out, blaming Howard for slights and for things he knew his father had not done in 1946.

“Sorry,” Tony suddenly blurted out. He did not know what compelled him to say it, but somehow he knew he needed to say it before it was too late – too late for what, he did not know.

Howard started from where he was, looking up as if he had just woken up from a daze. “What?”

Tony grimaced and absently grabbed one of his flat heads in a nearby toolbox and fiddled with it. “Sorry. Just...wanted to apologize for being a dick-er, an ass to you earlier, when you know, the last time we were in here...”

“Uh, oh,” Howard blinked before shrugging, “no harm done. I mean, I really hope that maybe if I do go back, I can retain some of the memory of what you said about me as a father and try not to make your life so bad...”

Tony chewed his lower lip and looked away before rubbing the back of his neck, “Listen...it...wasn't that bad, Dad...er, Howard. I mean, there were the good times mixed in with some of the bad and I kind of get it for the most part. Running Stark Industries took a lot of effort and time. And I guess you were also running SH-err, uh...well, another organization on top of Stark Industries.”

“I was?” Howard looked interested and Tony cursed himself for nearly let slip that SHIELD existed. “Doesn't sound like good time management to me.”

“Eh, I think you were probably a consultant then,” as soon as the words came out of his mouth, Tony paused for a moment before shaking his head with a rueful smile on his face. “Son of a bitch...Fury knew it...” Howard only looked confused as Tony waved an absent hand and wrench towards him, “Nothing, I consulted for a paramilitary organization to whom its Director kind of told me he wanted me in such a capacity. Probably got it from you.”

“Okay...” his father shrugged, “still, running two organizations...it's a wonder that my home life didn't suffer-”

“I had good memories,” Tony interrupted with another shrug, “you took Mom and I to different places during the vacation months. I got to learn about different cultures, languages, even things that not many people can see on a daily basis. Got to have a somewhat healthy respect for the military through all of the company's contracts.” He neglected to mention he only respected Rhodey and some of the military brass who were not complete dicks to him by trying to insinuate that they knew best for his weapons. He tapped the flat head absently against the table Howard was working at for a few seconds, feeling a little more than awkward before opening his mouth to speak again, but Howard beat him to the punch.

“Don't know how much it'll mean since I'm probably not the father you are expecting yet, but I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by the suit of armor you created,” Howard's tone was light, hesitant and Tony froze, stunned.

“Y-You...you are?” he had not expected Howard to say _that_.

Howard lifted his head up, giving him a brief timid smile before his eyes shifted elsewhere, “Didn't really think of doing something like that. I mean, personalized armor with JARVIS being able to talk to you, help you. Seems risky, but you seemed to manage it well...and...well, I'm proud of you.”

Tony knew that it should not have been the compliment and praise he was expecting, after all, this version of Howard Stark was not as cynical or hard of a man as he had known growing up – but nonetheless Tony could feel _something_ inside him yearning to accept the praise, accept the fact that his father was proud of him, was proud of his achievements. Another part of him rebelled at it, wanted to rail in anger at it, wanted to suddenly _shout_ that it was a lie, that none of it was true because _he did not deserve it_. That his father was being hypocritical like each time he had shown him his accomplishments when he had been growing up. That each time he created his robotic arms, starting with Dummy, that he had not even gotten a single approving look, acknowledgment, or even just a pat on the head for what he created. Even when he designed and installed JARVIS, nothing. Not even a 'nice job, you've created one of the world's first artificial intelligence.'

Tony suddenly and violently suppressed that thought as he nodded faintly, a hesitant smile appearing on his lips. But something must have shown on his face as Howard's expressions morphed into one of concern before he sighed and shook his head, rubbing his eye as he crossed out what he had been doing.

“I was probably a bad father, wasn't I?” he asked and as much as Tony wanted to deny it, the words felt stuck in his throat. “Judging by your expression, probably was. Was never really a people person either...kind of had to lie my way through things, be ruthless because there would be others who took advantage of my naivete and business opportunities...” He sighed again before shaking his head once more, “I know it's probably empty words, but I'm sorry. Feels like trying to apologize to Peg all over again, except a lot worse.”

Tony looked down, wanting to say something, but nothing would come out. It was not that he did not know what to say, but rather he wanted to say _everything_ . He wanted to tell his father everything that had gone wrong in the last forty-something years of his life when he had been born, to warn him not to trust Obadiah Stane as a business partner. To ensure that Anton Vanko was deported to somewhere else besides Russia who would surely exile him to Siberia with his child. He wanted to tell him _not_ to drive on a particular patch of road in a highway in the year of 1991 because _he would die_ in the car accident that also took Maria Stark and an elderly Edwin Jarvis, leaving Anthony E. Stark the heir of Stark Industries _alone_ with no family until Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy slowly, but surely pulled him out of that depression.

Most of all, he wanted his father to _survive_ . To live and see him as Iron Man, to tell him in whatever ninety-year-old age he was in 2014, that he was proud of him. That he had done some good in this life. He wanted his father to see Steve one last time, like Peggy was doing now. To live his life to the fullest and not be weighed down by the problems of SHIELD, by Stark Industries, to not _die_ by HYDRA's hand because they deemed it an 'accident,' because he _knew_ too much. He wanted to warn his father that when he created SHIELD, Armin Zola and HYDRA would grow as a parasite to the organization that was his and Peggy Carter's legacy.

Instead, he stared at the yellowed paper he had found in the brownstone his father grew up in. It was upside down and he traced the letters, his mind absently forming the words before-

“Hang on,” he tugged at the paper, bringing it closer to himself as he stared hard at the letters upside down, “wait, this is...they're numbers? But...backwards by an eight system-”

“Let me see that,” his father suddenly snatched the paper out of his hands and turned it upside down himself, a frown gracing his features before it became even more pronounced. He made a few noises before the frown turned into a thin grim line and he set the paper down before grabbing a new clean sheet, exactly like the one that had been yellowed with age and started slowly write down, mumbling almost nonsensically to himself.

“Dad?” Tony prodded.

“We used Comanche code in a limited sense during the war, European Theatre, against HYDRA,” his father explained as he continued to slowly write down each symbol, “Hitler knew about the Navajo and other tribes' usage of code since the first Great War, so it was limited, but the SSR knew that Schmidt didn't like anything that was not perceived as his ideal. However, we couldn't take the risk, so one of the other Howling Commandos, Jones, and I came up with a numbering and language system based off of the Comache code that Eisenhower and the others were using. Jones got the language part since he spoke French and German, but I devised the numbering system. Similar to the series of numbers Washington used during the Revolutionary War with the Culper Ring.”

“And...that's what the cipher's about?” Tony gestured to the yellowed piece of paper that Howard was reading upside down. “But I ran through all known encryption and codes-”

“A select few of us were required to memorize it. Then, we burned all known traces of it on paper. It's all committed to memory,” Howard glanced up at him and tapped his mind, “also why it's never been recorded down. SSR knows about it, but anyone who knows it swore never to write it down. Phillips hated it, but he also understood the necessity of it.”

“Why?”

“Because we were going deep into enemy territory sometimes. Beyond the main lines of resistance to get at Schmidt. Steve and the other Commandos, if they were ever captured-”

“Could have easily, I don't know, killed Hitler?” Tony never knew this about his father or his time during the war. All he had ever heard were stories about Steve's heroics or just generally anecdotes about Captain America in the SSR camps, nothing about their missions or how deep into enemy territory they went.

“Hitler was too well guarded, even for Steve's Commandos or the 107 th  which was attached to the SSR. We did submit a plan to Eisenhower, but he shot it down because he did not want to sacrifice so many troops just to get to Hitler. Sometimes, we helped other units near the main lines of resistance like North Africa, Bastogne, or even Haguenau before we launched our own attacks on HYDRA outposts and bases,” Howard looked at him for a second before going back to his work, “it wasn't pretty, it wasn't clean, it was-”

“War,” Tony finished for him and met his father's curious gaze before he tapped his chest, right where the arc reactor used to be, “I had shrapnel in my chest once before. Created an arc reactor, electro magnetic field that prevented the shrapnel from shredding my heart to pieces. Got it removed about a year and half ago, but that's not the point. I got shrapnel in my chest because I was captured by a local warlord whom I discovered was using my weapons. Actually,” he snorted bitterly, “was one of my own weapons that gave me the shrapnel in my chest. Realized after I escaped that the war I had been fighting, the weapons I've been providing, was contributing to the destruction and war effort I had been _trying_ to prevent.”

He saw Howard flick a look down to his chest before glancing beyond him and gestured with a chin towards a few of the Iron Man suits he had created again after he had enacted the House Party protocol. “The Iron Man suits?”

“...Yeah,” Tony grimaced a little, “didn't like what I was doing with the company, creating weapons that killed innocents if they fell into the wrong hands.”

Howard closed his eyes briefly and nodded in understanding. He looked back down and made a few more notes before setting his pencil down. “I don't really know why I just told you all of that, considering it is still a secret that only Peggy, myself, and the Commandos know, but...” He shrugged, “Anyway, translated the whole thing.” He held up the paper, “A few numbers, which I'm thinking coordinates, and something that says 'There But For the Grace of God Go I,' - I think that's probably from John Bradford or something, anyways, talking about the innumerable possibilities that lead only to one path or many-not the point I'm trying to make, but probably referencing that there's multiple paths one could take, et cetera.”

“A quote from a biblical scholar who was burned at the stake by the Tudors and doesn't even mention anything about time travel or even a warning of how to shut it down-”

“Actually I was looking at your schematics earlier and I think I might have found the power source? Maybe,” Howard looked confused for a second before glancing up at the ceiling, “hey JARVIS, how do you bring up the schematics-oh.” Tony had to smile at the sudden appearance of the holographic projection of the 0-8-4 that had appeared in front of his father's workstation.

“I can definitely say for sure when I was looking at this thing back in my time, it was glowing a bright blue. Now, look at it. It's kind of a faint blue, which means, maybe it's slowly draining power. Anyway, you see all of these other lines and stuff? Yeah, I'm thinking whomever created this, probably the same ones who created the Tesseract since you mentioned earlier the blue like the Tesseract – and it does seem to be glowing blue like the HYDRA weapons Schmidt used – but this here, and here?” his father pointed out two small segmented pieces, “looks a bit like-”

“A rotary locks of sorts,” Tony murmured absently poking at the projection before looking at his father, “base of eight instead of ten? Also, you think that the drain means-”

“Probably for the base of eight and ten. Maybe it's why I encrypted it, or will encrypt it in the base of eight instead of the usual ten,” Howard waved the piece of yellowed paper along with the fresh sheet that contained the decryption. “And yes, it's probably what you're thinking along with the lines of what I'm thinking. The blue's probably like a battery of sorts. Once it stops glowing blue-”

“You guys are stuck here,” Tony nodded before turning to look towards the actual object itself that was sitting in the far corner of the lab. “Rotary locks and these numbers... Maybe coordinates...doesn't hurt to give it a try-” He trailed off as he noticed the object was starting to glow blue. “Uh, Dad...no wait, JARVIS, did we hit the deadline?!”

JARVIS' reply of, “No sir, there is at least seven hours left,” was barely heard over the high-pitched whine of the object before suddenly a cloud of smoke burst forth, engulfing the workshop and something seemingly zapped into existence.

Tony was already on the move, honed by his time as Iron Man and also the recent appearance of the Winter Soldier. He pulled his father down to the ground with him while flicking his wrists to activate a one-use repulsor blast. However, as the acrid smoke started to clear, Tony could see the outline of someone definitely female, standing near the 0-8-4.

“Is that-”

“One use only, good for self-defense if my suit's not near me,” Tony answered his father's half-spoken question before he got up from behind the cover, cautiously inching forward as the figure seemingly swayed against the shadows cast by the clearing smoke. Before he even knew what he was doing, Tony found himself moving forward, propelled by the figure collapsing to the ground and neatly slid underneath and caught the woman by the shoulders, automatically cradling her head as her feet slid out from underneath her.

Shock filled him as he stared back into the pain-lined face of the woman _who looked almost exactly like Steve_. Except, it was most definitely a feminine version of Steve. She had the same blonde-hair and coloration like Steve, but the cut was longer, almost similar to what Natasha wore. Her body armor hugged her figure, but he could instantly tell it was also protecting her- Or at least protecting her to a certain point judging by the swath of dark red blood that pooled across her stomach and stained parts of her arms, chest, and legs.

“...Tony?” he looked down to see Steve's clear blue eyes staring back at him, her voice higher pitched than Steve's but not so much that he could easily mis-identify her as _his_ Steve Rogers.

“...Steve?” he hesitated and saw her pain-lined face smile a little, revealing blood-stained teeth. “Uh...hey...you're, uh, looking pretty good,” Tony did not know what to say as he took a quick look at the severe wounds this apparent female Steve Rogers had suffered before she had been transported across space and time.

“...Liar,” she coughed, a grimace passing across her face as she tried to curl in on her coughs and failed. “...Am dying...”

And just like that Tony felt his heart seized, a part of him wanting to suddenly scream no, no, no, as he had lost Pepper again before she revealed that she had survived. He could seemingly feel the ghostly affection, a passionate love that somehow he realized was from _that_ reality's Tony Stark, who by all rights, should have been holding this Steve- no, this _Stephanie_ Rogers. This feminine Captain America. That she had been captured in what was most certainly a suicide attempt to free her friends in SHIELD. That somehow, everything in her world had gone straight to hell because Alexander Pierce had been far more successful in a far earlier time than what he had done in this reality, because everyone Steve- _Stevie_ had known, had been captured and were awaiting execution and or conversion to be mindless agents.

Stevie had rescued everyone at the cost of her own life, saving a broken Nick Fury, a disabled Maria Hill, even saving her aged, but still-alive Howling Rangers. She had saved the Avengers, but many had also perished in the attempt. Samantha Wilson and Clint Barton had died holding the line so she could get her friends out, betrayed by Nathan Romanov and now-

“The bomb's set to go off, I made sure of that. Pierce can't get to it...” she coughed, blood flecking the corners of her lips and Tony realized that besides external injuries, she had internal ones; ones apparently too severe for her super-soldier healing abilities to stabilize to keep her alive. He could easily see her fighting off wave after wave of HYDRA soldiers, fighting past the bullet wounds, past the punches and kicks thrown at her. They had _tortured_ her severely afterwards, had wanted to make a public mockery of her, but Pierce knew that it would only galvanize the public because she _was_ Captain America and he needed no competition to his rule over the world with the INT-Helicarriers.

“Uh, that's-that's good...” Tony did not know what to say as he could see the sad, but loving life Stevie had lead. He could not help but feel the lump of something painful lodged in his throat as he tried to swallow past it. He _knew_ it was more than likely because of her reality's Tony Stark feeling this, but he could not help but also feel it bleed into him, that _her_ Tony Stark absolutely loved and adored Stephanie Rogers. Because-

“Howie is fine...alive, I-I,” her breath hitched a little as she arched her neck, a shudder of pain passing through her before she forced herself to continue to talk, “Peggy an' Bucky got him out.”

Tony nodded almost absently before he realized _why_ she had launched her suicide mission. Because...Howie, was none other than Howard Stark II, _their_ son. His and Stephanie's. They were married. Or at least common law married to the point where they had a child together. Pierce had discovered their secret and _stole_ the child from them where Stevie sacrificed everything that she was, everything that Captain America stood for to rescue her and Tony's child. He looked back down at her and bit his lip as he realized that he really could not say _anything_ to her after that because he realized that she was hallucinating. She clearly believed that she had not crossed dimensions and into an alternate reality because she was so close to death that she just needed someone to know. And now she was confessing everything to him because he was more than likely so similar to her Tony Stark. It was utterly eerie.

And Tony thought someone might have walked over his grave.

“H-Hey...Tony?” her breaths were getting a little more labored and he unconscious tightened his grip on her shoulders, cradling her head a little closer to himself.

“Yeah?”

“Take-take c-care-”

“Howie, yeah...I will,” he reassured her with a sad smile, feeling the lump in his throat grow a lot more painful as he tried to swallow past the hurt.

The corners of her lips twitched up in a sad smile as tears started to fall from her eyes, slowly tracking down her blood-splattered cheeks. “Tell...Bucky that...he's Captain America now...g-gave him...the shield.”

“Stevie-”

“P-Please...” she whispered and he nodded, his protests dying on his lips. Her eyes tracked upwards and Tony thought that she had died before her smile grew just a little wider, “I'll be joining...you soon Howard...T-Tony...don't...blame your d-dad for everything...loved him too...like I l-love you...”

With the quietest of sighs, Tony felt the last breath leave Stevie before her body relaxed and her eyelids fluttered close. He stared numbly for a few seconds at the body of Stephanie “Stevie” Rogers, Captain America in his arms, wanting nothing more than to shake it, to shout for her to wake up, to not die in his arms because he could not bear to see it, because-

It was like being hit with the sledgehammer of a thousand stars as he suddenly saw the blackness of space once more. He could feel the panic rising in him, like when he had delivered the nuke to the main Chitauri cruiser on the other side of the Tesseract's portal. _He could see..._ him.

 _He was purple skinned and had piercing icy-blue eyes. They seemingly looked into the depths of his soul and judged him unworthy. A cruel malevolent smile turned his lips upwards and he wanted to quail underneath such power. But there was even more power as he saw him raise his arm up. A simple looking gauntlet was in his hand, but he knew the power within it, knew those_ Infinity Gems _were as deadly as all six combined in the gauntlet. He was omnipresent, able to be more than just a god, but held hostage those who would not bow down to him. And he knew the names of three of those Gems because he had seen them – Tesseract, Space. Chitauri sceptre, Mind. Aether, Reality. The purple one - a far away voice from the distance of cosmos, perhaps in the form of a tree somehow named_ Groot _named it the Power Gem. And the two others...they needed to find them and keep them away from this being, before it was too late._

 _But it was too late._ Thanos _had the Gems – and they were all doomed._

Tony blinked and found himself back in his workshop, still kneeling on the ground, as someone shook him. He blinked again, twitching before he realized his hands and arms were still held out like he was cradling someone, but- He blinked again and realized that the female Captain America had all but disappeared, leaving no trace of blood or even a sign that she had been there save for how his hands still seemingly held her dying body in it.

He huffed a breath and looked up to see Howard staring down at him, and beyond him, _his_ reality's Steve Rogers peering down, looking grim faced and a little disturbed. “Tony?” Steve asked quietly and Tony drew in a sharp breath, his head reeling a little at what he had seen and just witnessed.

“Uh-”

“You saw something, didn't you? After, uh, she-”

“It was nothing,” Tony suddenly stood up, grabbing the edges of the table that the 0-8-4 sat on as he blinked and rubbed his eyes. What...what had happened back there? He saw...Thanos? A female Steve Rogers die in his arms, babbling about children, marriage- Hell he had seen the woman's _whole life_ flash before his eyes and had _felt_ the love and affection-

Tony's grip on the edge of the table tightened as he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, steadying himself before opening them again and shook his head. He noticed out of the corner of his eyes that besides Steve, the others had also come down somewhere between Stephanie Rogers' death and his...vision.

“We...” he glanced at the 0-8-4 and saw that indeed, the faint glow of blue was a lot dimmer than he remembered, “We should figure this thing out...get you guys home-”

He pushed himself off of the table and turned his head, focused on the 0-8-4. He refused to let the others see how shaken he was by the whole thing as he waved his hands over the 0-8-4 and the holographic projections he had made of the thing materialized in front of him. He pulled out what his father had thought was the power source as well as the segmented pieces and stared at them before looking past the projections at the 0-8-4, seeing the corresponding positions- Wait a minute...Tony frowned as he bent to the side and stared at the 0-8-4 from a different angle. “Uh...there's more than one of those things you were talking about...Dad.”

“C-Come again?” his father stepped forward and he pointed towards the segmented pieces in the two different areas.

“I think this is why others from different realities have been coming through this thing...” he murmured, “look, you can't tell, but it looks like there's different notches that tells you which, I guess, reality, things are coming out of- JARVIS do you have-”

“Here,” Howard waved the two pieces of paper he had been holding and studied it for a second before looking at the segmented areas, “ah, yep, I think this is the one we've been coming out of-”

“You sure?” Tony asked, but even as the words left his mouth, his father suddenly pushed _something_ near it and quickly stepped back. Tony did the same, raising his arms up, noting out of the corner of his eyes Steve half-raising his shield up. Peggy, pale-faced and apparently looking like she had recently suffered another entropic cascade failure, also lifted her silvery gun, while Sam had drew out his own hand gun and even Barnes looked tense behind all of them.

A second later, a zapping sound filled the air as well as a brief, but small cloud of white acrid smoke, before it quickly dissipated. “Huh,” Tony lowered his arm as he stared at his familiar toolbox, which had gone missing the first time Peggy, Howard, and Jarvis had arrived. He cautiously approached it and picked at one of his tools, staring at it for a few seconds before setting it back down. He glanced at the 0-8-4 and noted that it was fainter than before.

“I take it that's...yours?” Howard asked and Tony nodded as he reached out and rummaged around his toolbox.

“Yeah,” he replied before he frowned, “wait, there's a special wrench that's missing. It was pretty advance for its time, but Dad, er, you told me that you found it some place in New York back in the 40s and that it looked like advance tech-” Tony abruptly stopped as his words caught up to his mind and laughed lightly. “Son of a bitch...”

“What?” Steve looked confused before Tony shot a grin at him as Howard also smiled a little.

“Stable time loop apparently,” Howard shrugged, “guess that wrench or whatever is going to be waiting for me when we get back. Family heirloom that turned into a stable time loop of sorts?”

“Probably,” he peered back at the 0-8-4, “JARVIS, how many...jumps for the lack of a better word, can this thing go at this power level?”

“Calculating sir,” JARVIS replied and was quiet for a few seconds before he came back, “I believe current calculations estimate at least one more.”

“So after this, no more alternate realities traveling from place to place or time travel?”

“More than likely sir, though I cannot possibly calculate what will happen,” JARVIS sounded apologetic, “the data provided regarding this is far too innumerable for even myself to speculate.”

Tony nodded and fell silent for a few seconds before Howard gently cleared his throat next to him. He turned to see his father rock a little back on his heels, “We should get going then...”

And just like that, he suddenly felt like a little kid who did not want his parents to leave, as Howard stepped away from him. He saw his father stare at the others as Jarvis moved past Pepper, the two of them having watched everything from the stairwell. Jarvis had a solemn look on his face. He saw Steve tighten his grip on Peggy's hand before the two looked at each other as they realized that this was the moment of goodbye – that they would probably never see each other again until this very time and day when he was still young and she an elderly woman. Tony turned, opening his mouth to say something to his father, but nothing would come out.

He turned back again in time to see Peggy give Steve a gentle kiss on the lips before she walked towards where Howard and Jarvis was waiting. He met her firm gaze, noting the unshed tears in her eyes before she smiled and nodded her head at him. He knew what she wanted – for Steve to be taken care of, that his place was now here, in the future, and that she understood – he did not belong in the past anymore, no matter what. He could still see her heartbreak, her reluctance to let him go, but he could also see her slowly getting over it, moving past the grief of losing him.

And Tony suddenly knew that if his father, Peggy, and Jarvis returned this very instant with no memory of what had happened in the last two days, then history would repeat itself. He felt the urge to not let it happen, that he did not _want_ that to happen; did not want his parents to die in the HYDRA-caused accident- “December 12  th  , 1991-” he suddenly shouted just as he saw Howard push the button-

And with a whining zapping noise and cloud of white acrid smoke, Tony knew it was too late. His parents and their ever faithful butler Edwin Jarvis had died on December 12 th , 1991 in a car accident. He knew it because it was the here and now. That nothing...nothing had changed for them.

But in the here and now, for himself, for Steve and the others in the aftermath of what had just happened...that was another story.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Female!Steve Rogers is an allusion/reference to one of the comic alternate realities where it was actually female!Tony marrying Steve. I just turned that on its head a little bit and made it a bit angsty. Also, if you squint I've alluded to the possibility of a one-sided ship between Howard and Steve (per “Agent Carter” episode 4 and 8). Onward to the epilogue!


	8. Epilogue

Point of View

by: Shadow Chaser

 

_Epilogue_

 

“-cember 12 th , 1991-”

Howard blinked and looked around the dusty warehouse with its creaking chains and gloomy atmosphere. Had they just- Were they not just- He could have sworn he saw something so futuristic, so gleaming white, clean, and utterly  _ hopeful _ just a second ago...

The sudden tinkling sound of something metal scuffling on the floor made him look down to see a gleaming wrench lying next to the object that he had found in Rio. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands, feeling an odd warmth of affection rush over him. This...wrench was important, he knew that, but for the life of him, he could not understand why.

Still, he pocketed the wrench. At the same time he felt a slip of paper in his pants. He had not put anything in that pocket before...had he? Howard pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it, staring at a series of numbers and the words ' _There But For the Grace of God, Go I_.' “John...Bronson...?” he murmured mostly to himself, staring at the numbers before another slip of paper fell out behind it and he bent over to pick that one up.

This one looked almost exactly like the paper he had just read, but it was encrypted. He turned the paper carefully around, the sense of deja vu and oddness that he  _ had _ seen it before washing over him. He  _ knew _ this...encrypted with one of the Commandos' personal encryption codes. He knew it, but somehow could not recall... Howard glanced back at the object, noting the blue glow that surrounded it dimming. There was something about the blue glow he knew was inherently dangerous, that it was not to be touched. That nothing on this thing should be touched except to be handled extremely carefully because bad things would appear...

“Well?” Peggy's sharp tone startled him out of his thoughts as he looked at her and frowned, his brow crinkling in confusion.

“Well, what?”

“How are you going to have me explain this to Dooley-,” Peggy gestured to the object and Howard suddenly saw her frown, “huh...somehow the words entropic cascade failure just appeared in my head.”

“Entropic...cascade...failure?” those words sounded familiar to Howard, “usually involving potential wormhole theories published by Schwarzchild and also involving the Einstein-Rosen bridge theory. It includes white and black holes, but that usually deals with alternative realities that diverge at a certain point, but since the points of time and space are so convoluted to which there is chaos in each of our actions-”

“Howard,” Peggy held up a hand shutting him up as she shook her head.

Howard bit his lip before looking at Peggy who somehow, looked pale and dizzied, as if she had recently suffered something. But...that was not right, was it? Surely she was not  _ that _ seasick from quick jaunt from the Port Jeff Ferry to Bridgeport and from there the train ride in to New York?

“I...don't think I want to give this to Dooley...” he started hesitantly and saw a flash of irritation pass across her face before it morphed into another frown, this one deeper than the last.

“I don't know why, but part of me really agrees with what you just said,” Peggy shook her head, “but I also don't think you should keep it either.”

“Yeah...” he agreed, staring at the object whose blue glow was fading, “I...don't like it. I feel like it should be put back where I found it and buried under a ton of rocks. I...don't think I want to see it in my lifetime...”

“September 17 th , 2014...” Peggy suddenly murmured as she pressed a hand to her forehead and stumbled a little. Jarvis surged forward, but she waved him away as she straightened, “2014...a whole new century...why...why did I say that?”

Howard could only shake his head. He did not know why she had said that nor why he thought he had heard a vaguely familiar voice tell him what was probably December 12 th , 1991. It was at least several decades away and it was only 1946. What would happen on December 12 th , 1991?

“I'm going to put it back where I found it...” he belatedly shoved the papers he had back in his pocket before giving Peggy a faint smile. “Customs forms,” he lied and saw her arch an eyebrow, but did not press the issue. “Sorry for making you come all this way...”

“It won't be a repeat of the Blitzkrieg Button, that's for sure,” she said testily and Howard winced. It had been a couple of weeks since he had last seen her and she had not forgiven him yet for that. “Dooley says that the machine we found in Brandt's rooms activated, so he's got his cryptographers looking at it.”

“Be careful,” Howard cautioned and Peggy only sniffed in an very unladylike manner, “What? You've been a good friend to me, even though I probably don't deserve it. I just...just...be careful okay Peg?”

She only stared at him for a long moment before she shook her head, “If that'll be all, I have to be getting back. If we do have a lead on Leviathan-”

“Yeah...” Howard glanced at Jarvis who nodded once before the two of them left, Jarvis driving her back to the Griffith Hotel. He glanced back at the object and felt another wave of nostalgia engulf him. Somehow...he knew he should have remembered something regarding this, but also somehow knew that he would never see this object again once he returned it to where he had found it. It was not cursed, he was sure of that, but he could not help but feel like it had allowed him to come to terms with  _ something _ . What that 'some thing' was, he could not recall.

And that saddened him.

* * *

_ May 8 th , 1946 _

 

Freedom and the free air had never tasted so sweet as he breathed in the scent of New York's night sky. It felt like a heavy burden had been lifted from him as he ambled down the sidewalks, deftly avoiding the dispersing crowds who had gathered in Times Square to celebrate the first anniversary of V-E Day. The only regret he had was that Steve wasn't here; that Steve did not survive to see the end of the war and it had haunted him just hours earlier. Fenhoff had pulled the painful memories, the longing and love he had felt for Steve too close to the surface that he had instantly retreated behind the facade he always wore whenever someone got too close to the truth.

It was also why he was now walking the streets alone, having brushed Jarvis and Peggy's concerns off, departing with a quick jaunty statement to Agent Thompson and the others that he wanted a woman's company. The truth was far from that and Howard needed some time alone, some time to rebuild the shell that Fenhoff had shattered so brutally. The doctor was right, everything he touched was death. Steve was the only good to come out of it and even then, he had been unable to save him.

He jammed his hands into his pockets and felt the sudden crinkle of paper. He stopped, pulling it out and unfolding it, only to realize that it was the same two pieces he had been carrying around with him since he had put the object back in its original hiding spot outside of Rio. It was a miracle that Dottie, or whatever that dame's name was who had kidnapped him with Fenhoff, had not actually thrown it out. He stared at it as he studied the series of numbers and the words that clearly had been scribbled by his own hand writing.

_ “When,” Steve's voice was steady, even though his expression said otherwise, “when did you write it?” _

Howard blinked and looked around. Why did he suddenly hallucinate Steve's voice? He half expected his friend to be standing near him, staring at him with his striking blue eyes, telling him that he was a good person even though he had killed so many with his inventions and weapons. He glanced back down at the pieces of paper. When had he wrote it indeed. He did not remember writing anything of the sort, his eidetic memory not even recalling anything of that nature, but everything on the paper was in his hand writing. He shook his head; Fenhoff's powerful hypnosis was still getting to him even though Peggy had broken through it.

Still, he had a feeling that the pieces of paper was important. That no one else should be able to find it until...until well...something very important happen. He knew that much. He could not stick it in a vault, that much was certain judging by how that Russian lady had stolen his weapons and framed him, and he certainly could not risk carrying it on himself anymore. He needed a place to put the paper, where no one could find it until the right...time. Until it was needed. He did not know why he thought of it like that, not quite understanding what it really meant, but he knew that somehow, it would end up in the right hands  _ at the right time _ .

Howard glanced up at the street signs he had just passed, his lips pressed into a thin line. He had always long vowed that when he became famous, he would never return to  _ that _ place. But he also knew that it would be the  _ only _ place no one would search, because he himself had destroyed  _ everything _ prior to his involvement with Project Rebirth and the beginnings of Stark Industries. Nothing mattered before that; he was Howard Stark.

He turned and started to walk down Broadway, making his way to his childhood home on the lower east side. The piece of paper with the coding would be safe there. He would burn the other one. No one would know until it was the right time.

* * *

_1968_

 

If Peggy knew that being Director of a secret paramilitary organization involved this much paperwork, she would have never taken Howard or General Phillips on their offer to be the co-founder of SHIELD. She missed the field, searching for clues, saving people, and though she would never admit it – being a proper lady and all – she kind of missed bashing heads together to get information. Her duties as the Director did allow her to occasionally go into the field, but it seemed like Phillips and even Howard had insisted that she bring a security detail around her. That had irked her to no end and she had decided that her security detail needed more training in finding her whenever she managed to lose them.

The one thing she really hated was the paperwork. Some of it she delegated to her secretaries and assistants, but most of it she took care of only because it felt like she was still reading hard intel, out in the field gathering information. She liked the ones that provided the fullest of detail and it seemed that the ones provided by a neophyte agent named Nicholas J. Fury gave her all of the information she wanted and needed – as if she was still in the field. She had already designated him on a fast track to promotion, assigning him some of the fieldwork in South America and the Caribbean Islands to see how he did in those territories. If he proved himself in that area, her next goal was to move him to the hard one, the Russians.

She sighed and set aside Fury's latest report, picking up another one before she frowned as she read the after action report. It was from Dugan and the other Commandos that were operating out of Europe. The Commandos themselves had expanded to a full-fledged team she codenamed STRIKE Alpha, but to her, they were still the Howling Commandos even though they technically disbanded two years after World War II. He was reporting the aftermath of the failure to save British Ambassador Dalton Graines in Madripoor.

It was a massacre as the dinner party the Ambassador had been at; all guests and even children had been eliminated, their bloody corpses blown to pieces by well-placed bombs. Those that apparently survived had been shot by a high caliber sniper rifle. At first it looked like the Ambassador had survived the bombings only to be shot, but Dugan had reported that an eye-witness who used the bodies scattered around the room to cover her own wounds, said that the Ambassador had been the first to fall from a unknown shooter before the room exploded.

She reported that all she saw was a shadow of someone opposite the building, the glint of a silvery arm with a red star emblazoned on it – like it was the Russian communist star. Dugan's report also said that there was no rifling on the bullets, making it unmarked and untraceable.

Peggy frowned as she held the paper in her hands. The arm with the star seemed so familiar, like she had seen it before, crossing her vision in a fast, furious fist-fight. She _knew_ it... She could have sworn she knew who it belonged to... That it was a male, with a blank look that slowly became clear with recognition. She could have sworn that the owner of the silver arm had brown hair...right? Peggy shook her head, snapping herself out of her thoughts before placing Dugan's report at an angle to Fury's. Whomever had killed the British Ambassador was a ghost, but Peggy could not shake the thought that she knew the ghost.

* * *

_1979_

 

“Welcome back sir,” Jarvis held out a cleaner version of an overcoat as Howard shed the one he had been wearing for the last ten or so days. It was crusted with frosty-salt, the weather turning unexpectedly rough as they were out to sea. It had forced him to prematurely turn the ship back to Boston and he could tell that the Captain was all too grateful for doing so, even for the amount of money Howard had him on retainer every year.

“No luck,” he shook his head as he waved a jaunty farewell to the crew who waved back. They knew him and he knew them and while they were all glad to be back in port, he could tell that they were also glad that they were back early, using the time to spend with their families before they went out again to do their actual jobs of deep sea fishing.

“I am sorry to hear that sir,” he glanced at Jarvis to whom he looked like had aged a few years in the past ten days.

“You okay, pal?” he asked as he got into the back of the seat, Jarvis taking the front. They drove off.

“Just a bit of a cold sir-”

“You could have told me, I would have just driven back-”

“Do you even know the way back from this pier, sir?” Jarvis asked and Howard smiled thinly.

“Yeah, very funny Jarvis,” he shook his head, “no, okay?”

“Very good sir,” Jarvis replied, the epitome of politeness, though Howard heard the sarcasm in his tone.

“Well, Maria and Tony should be happy-”

“Your son has declined to return home for the holidays, sir,” Jarvis interrupted and Howard frowned as he looked out of the window, watching the small flakes of snow fall down. “He cited something about a project due in the early months of January-”

“I know _that's_ bullshit. Phillips Exeter Academy does not have projects due in early January, at least according to the subjects that he's studying about,” Howard frowned as he shook his head. Tony had been living mostly on his own in New Canaan, Connecticut since he was in middle school. Maria usually lived with him during his middle school years, Howard maintaining triple residencies in California where Stark Industries' headquarters was located as well as the second biggest branch of SHIELD, New York City, and Connecticut. Phillips Exeter was his alma mater and Howard wanted the best for his son.

“We're driving to New Hampshire, I'm picking him up-”

“Sir, I believe it is for the best,” Jarvis interrupted quietly and Howard stared at the back of his butler's head, noting the seriousness of his voice.

“Another lead in that other matter?”

“Possibly. However, it requires your attention to be in California. I've already arranged some fund raising gala of sorts. Your contact is of the feminine persuasion who claims to have information regarding an incident about a soviet star on an assassin's arm and something about a red room.”

“All right, get us to Logan then,” he shook his head, “Maria know about this?”

“I've told her the usual, aside from the fund raising gala. She understands,” Jarvis replied and Howard sighed, scrubbing his face a little.

“Jarvis, after we land, make sure I call Maria and apologize for ruining her Christmas. Maybe call Peg to see if she'd be willing to keep her company? I know she has her own family and stuff, but-”

“I will sir,” Jarvis turned his head a little and Howard saw the small smile on his ever-faithful butler's face. He returned the smile with a tired one of his own. There would always been next year to search for Steve, or maybe in a couple of months if the weather was good. They had found the Tesseract just two years previous, so he knew he was probably close to the area where the _Valkyrie_ must have crashed. He did not know why, but he _wanted_ to see Steve, wanted to see him at least one more time before he got too old – because a part of him did not want to face the growing possibility that he would never see his friend ever again, never tell him the truth.

* * *

The gala he had flown out to never occurred as Howard had arrived well before the guests, but in time to see his long time-friend and former Howling Commando, Jim Morita shot dead in front of him. His face was sprayed with the flecks of blood by the bullets entering and exiting Jim's chest and head, and had barely caught his friend as he fell to the ground, dead. Howard only looked up towards the source of the bullets to see the flash of what looked like a silver arm with a red Soviet star emblazoned on the shoulder muscle fleeing from the building across before he stared numbly back down at Jim.

It was a warning. He knew that very well. A clear warning for him to stop digging around into the origins of the mysterious silver-armed man Peggy had mentioned in an offhand report years earlier. To stop what he was doing or else people close to him would die like Jim Morita had.

* * *

_1989_

Howard visited Peggy as she laid in the hospital bed, her grey-white hair falling in soft cascades around her, forming a halo of sorts. “Forever a dame after my own heart,” he cracked as he set the large vase of flowers on her end table before pulling up a chair as she smiled at him.

“Flirt,” she croaked, coughing lightly before closing her eyes to breathe.

“We are two of a kind, Peg,” he grasped her weathered hands into his own, feeling the wrinkles of years on them, similar to his own. His were far more calloused than hers, years of working on projects, writing things, running Stark Industries. Obadiah was handling most of it now, Tony wanting _nothing_ to do with the company even though Howard wanted him to at least take over some of the more important things. His son was stubborn, he had to give him that, brilliant too, but stubborn. It was his only legacy left, after what he had just learned from one of his contacts a few weeks ago.

It was also why he was here, visiting her in the hospital. To tell her that her accident was not really an accident, but rather an assassination attempt. She had only survived by the skin of her teeth and bandages still covered parts of her, requiring skin grafts after her burns healed. But he also knew that he had to tell her carefully, not knowing who to trust. The last person he had carelessly told was Dum-Dum Dugan and he had paid for it with his life, found drowned in his pool a week after he had visited. Everyone called it a suicide, Dugan having revealed to have some mental problems after his service in the war, the SSR, and then SHIELD. The coroners had diagnosed his mind to have gaping holes during the autopsy, but Howard did not believe that.

She sighed, shifting a little before a wince crossed her face. “Howard-”

“Peg-” he started at the same time before pausing and gesturing with his chin for her to continue.

“Doctors say it's dementia, of a sort,” she gestured with her free hand and Howard blinked, not comprehending the words for a second before he realized that she was referring to her mind.

“A-what? Excuse me?”

“Dementia. I've been having some memory problems lately and this accident only triggered the worst parts of it,” she shook her head, “pretty soon...maybe in a few years or so I won't remember certain things or details. I'm retiring soon, so-”

“But...” Howard trailed off as he realized he could not tell her what he knew now. Not when she could possibly forget after a few years or even a few months. He could not endanger her life, her _retirement_ when _they_ only killed those who knew. Maybe it was for the better that she retired, that she left SHIELD and all, before they got to her like they had gotten to Morita, Dugan, and the other commandos. Falsworth was the only one left of the Commandos to survive and he had sensibly retired just months ago from active service. They had not touched him nor had Howard notified him of his discoveries.

“Howard...I've had a good run...” Peggy looked at him, her brown eyes soft and full of understanding and Howard could only nod.

“Yeah...yeah you did,” he swallowed back the urge to tell her what he had found. Steve would never forgive him if he got his best girl killed like this. And if he died before Peggy, he could never meet Steve in Heaven or wherever he was and tell him that Peggy died because he could not keep his mouth shut. He forced himself to smile widely, to adopt the jovial and playboy attitude everyone knew him for. “We're gonna throw you the _best_ retirement party Peg.”

* * *

_December 12 th, 1991_

 

This day was important. He did not know why, but it was important. Something niggled at him that it would be a day long remembered, but what it was, he did not know. All he knew was that it might have been shouted long ago, by some voice he did not quite recognize, but wondered if it was Tony's. But that would be absurd, right? Howard shrugged as he waited outside for Maria to finish. Jarvis was bringing the car around, his ninety-year-old body still hale and healthy as if he had not served for all those years. Technically Jarvis had retired as his butler back in the 1980s, but Howard had allowed him and his wife to stay in one of the many properties he owned. After all, why have that much room when you did not have people to share it with.

If there was anything, it would be tomorrow, December 13th that would be the day of reckoning. He was going to leak a press release later in the night about whistle-blowing the lid off of SHIELD that HYDRA was growing within. He did not want to leak it earlier because it would tip off those in SHIELD who were sympathetic to the terrorist Nazi organization. Jarvis had helped with the preparation and he had made sure that all of his assets, even his will was updated in case something happened. Tony had refused to talk to him all year since last Christmas when it had passed in relative peace until he had come home with two girls, claiming to be on the Playboy calendar for the months of August and November. Howard could not stand that; he wanted his son to _not_ be like him, not put on airs in such a way that was idiotic, but Tony had refused to listen to all reason, screaming that he was an adult now and made his own decisions.

“Ready?” he called back to the open front door and just as he finished speaking Maria stepped out, a smile on her aged face, but still as beautiful as ever. At the same time, he heard the crunch of gravel as Jarvis brought the Bentley around and got out, opening the door for him and Maria like old habits.

“A perfect old-fashion date for Mister Howard Stark and Missus Maria Stark,” Maria said and Howard nodded.

“I just want this day to never end,” he said quietly as he settled into his seat and Jarvis drove off.

* * *

Two hours and forty minutes later, Tony Stark received a phone call that would change his life. His parents, Maria and Howard Stark had died in a car accident along with their faithful butler Edwin Jarvis. It would only be years later, when SHIELD's files were released along with HYDRA's that Tony would learn that his parents did not die in an accident, but were assassinated by HYDRA.

* * *

_Present Day_

 

Tony absently stared at the hard-light projection of the 0-8-4 that had been the time traveling alternate reality device. The object itself had immediately shut down with a whine and rendered inert by JARVIS' scans as soon as Howard, Peggy, and Jarvis had left. JARVIS's calculations were correct – there was enough 'juice' so to speak for one more activation. If another reality's Steve had come through right then and there, it would have been a death sentence for himself and Peggy; his father unable to wed his mother and have him, Peggy dying from entropic cascade failure. Who knew what the laws of time, space, and physics would have been altered if it had happened.

There was also something he had discovered in the aftermath of what had happened – a disturbing sort that he had quickly buried under quadruple layers of encryption regarding the whole thing. It had not even made it into the report he had filed with Coulson before returning the inert object to him.

He had discovered that somehow, the object was seemingly attuned to Steve, not to Peggy as he had originally thought. It was Peggy who had suffered the entropic cascade failures; each time she had one, things...came through. So he had gone with that, but somewhere in that, he had discovered that the object seemingly was encoded, for the lack of a better word, in a weird sort of way that it was focused on Steve instead. That was when he realized, the versions of Steve coming through the object – those were because somehow the object had pulled Steve's desire to see Peggy and Howard again through – Jarvis arriving as an added bonus. It had also started to pull at different alternate versions of Steve; akin to a more  _physical_ manifestation of entropic cascade failure. Except it materialized as the variety of Steve Rogers that had arrived. Peggy exhibited the classic symptoms of entropic cascade failure on her self, Steve's presence had shown the more dangerous, the more physical side. Including ones that came with armies.

“JARVIS,” he called out as he pushed the projections to the side and used his touchpen to open up a new holographic blueprint, “new project, save to secure servers as usual, double the encryption.”

“Double sir?” JARVIS sounded puzzled and Tony nodded.

“Yeah,” he brought up a window for the files he kept on hand and did a functional search of them before he found what he was looking for. It was labeled under the Chitauri folders. It had been something his suit had scanned and picked up as well as what he had studied in the aftermath of the invasion with the leviathan and insect-hive mind mentality of the Chitauri themselves.

“Don't want this falling into the wrong hands, even if they try to break into the servers,” he commented absently as he dragged the relevant files over and moved them into the new project folder. Task done, he opened several of the files and started to make adjustments with another programming window.

“What shall I label this?” JARVIS asked politely.

“Hmm...” Tony tapped his cheek for a second as he stared at the files. “How about...Ultron?”

“Ultron sir?” JARVIS asked.

“Got a problem with that?” he pulled another file and merged it, giving himself an exploded view of the workings of the hive mind.

“No sir, but I must forewarn you that Captain Rogers did mention Ultron in relation to an apparent vision he had when he was fighting the Winter Soldier version of himself. It was related to the context of Sergeant Barnes and it alluded to the fact that Ultron was attacking.”

Tony had not heard that part. His comm with Steve had only been reactivated after the Winter Soldier version of Steve had been killed. Steve had turned his comm off when he had ran from the corner of Grand Street all the way back up to 42 nd Street. It was because he did not want to create a horrific feedback due to the speed he was running.

He shrugged, “Well, I can safely say that this Ultron won't be attacking anyone except those who are a threat to humanity.” He tapped and made a few more lines, “You're going to get a brother J, how does that sound? Hopefully if the 0-8-4 activates again or if something like the Chitauri come through, Ultron can help us out in case Steve or I aren't around.”

“Yes sir,” JARVIS replied and Tony smiled briefly. The events of the past two days told him that they needed more defenders against unknown objects that could randomly activate. With Natasha was looking for Clint, Bruce with Betty, if he or Steve were incapacitated...then the world would truly be in danger. Ultron would fix that. It had to.

* * *

Steve had just shut off the engine to his motorcycle when his phone buzzed and he glanced at it, seeing a number he did not recognize. When he had moved to the Tower, Tony had given him a phone with heavy encryption and a bunch of other tech and gizmos that was supposed to prevent him from getting any unwanted calls, especially from telemarketers and also from enemies looking to pinpoint him during phone calls. So receiving a call with the word [Unknown Number] listed always made him curious. He answered the call, “Hello?”

“Hey soldier,” the sultry purr of Natasha's voice was a bit electronically distorted, but Steve caught the gist of it and smiled.

“Been a long time since we've last talked,” he answered, leaning back against his seat as he kicked the kickstand and let himself relax a bit.

“Been a bit busy,” Natasha replied, “heard things got a little hot back a few days ago.”

“Yeah, some 0-8-4 Coulson found,” Steve replied, “it's been handled.”

“But...” Natasha dragged out her next words, “you wished I or Clint was there, right?”

“I know you're looking for him-”

“Tell Cap thank you fucking very much for blowing my cover!” he heard the tinned voice of Clint Barton faintly and his smile grew wider.

“Hey Clint,” he called out before he heard a change from the phone to speaker mode.

“Hey yourself Cap,” Clint sounded healthy, but Steve was not sure what condition Natasha found him in. And the fact that he said that he had been blown out of cover meant that Clint had been undercover somewhere when the whole thing with HYDRA went down. “Tony had an experiment gone rogue?”

“Nah, something Coulson found and gave to Tony to work on,” Steve answered, “it's been handled.”

“Sounds like a story,” Clint replied, but there was a hint of finality in his statement. They all knew that while Tony's technology had the strongest encryption on them; there were still those out there who could easily tap in and record their conversations.

“Coming back soon?” he asked.

“Probably, taking the slow way back,” Natasha answered which was her way of telling Steve that they were coming back within a day or two. He did not know spy talk that well, even when Maria had tried to teach him when he had moved into the tower, but he had learned what she meant by those words when he had first discovered Bucky in Odessa.

“See you then,” Steve replied, “it's good to hear you guys are all right.”

“Aww, I think Cap misses us,” Clint groused with a small laugh before the quiet beep-beep told him that Natasha had disconnected the line.

He glanced at the phone's screen as it displayed how long the call was, but did not quite catch the numbers as he pondered the most recent events. Peggy had asked that he visit a few days after what had happened and it was where he was sitting outside right now. He finally understood what she meant during his visit with her before everything with the 0-8-4 had gone down. She more than likely remembered a vague sense of certain things and events, retaining only a handful of keywords and phrases to help her past self get back in time.

But she had also given him a chance to properly say his goodbye to her, to set her free like she had for him. He knew that she had no regrets at all. He got off of his motorcycle and squared his shoulders, feeling a lot lighter than when he had first woken up from the ice. She had set him free, now it was his turn to set her free – to let her know that while he would always love her, he belonged in the here and now. In the present, not the past.

 

~THE END~

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Final Notes:  
> First things first: I would love to thank all of you, the readers, for reading this fic. I've enjoyed your comments even though I was not able to fulfill the wishes of a few of them. I've also been shocked by the sheer amount of support and kudos this fic has gotten since it's initial posting – you've made me a very happy author. I can't express how happy it's made me, but know that you have my gratitude.  
> Onward to the nitty gritty details:  
> Congratulations for making it to the end of this short story. This was always outlined and written with a mind towards being Steve and Tony centric and their relationships with Peggy and Howard respectively. I originally got the concept when I was watching some random _Stargate SG-1_ episodes about the quantum mirror and alternate realities as well as _Stargate Atlantis' Daedalus Variations_ episode before it really came to fruition with the premiere of “Agent Carter” in early January. Seeing Peggy, Howard, and the others who had survived the war mourn for those lost in it tugged at my heart strings to the point where I wanted to do something about it.  
>  However, as readers of my other stories know, I am not one of those who revels or celebrates happy endings. Don't get me wrong, I love a happy ending as much as the next person, I just feel the characters need to work for it – and sometimes, they might not get the one they were expecting, but they will get an ending. I just primarly wanted to explore the nature of Peggy and Steve's relationship in context of what Steve had just faced with the downfall of HYDRA and Peggy just losing Steve. Then Tony decided to muscle his way in (he has a tendency to do that in all of my stories) and Howard came along for the ride as did Jarvis.  
> I decided to set this story right after Episode 4 instead of Episode 5 where the elements of the Red Room is first discovered because I wanted to keep the character list down and also keep it as a magnified look at Steve's relationships with the others. Plus, after Episode 5, Peggy's relationship with her co-workers as well as with the others put the plot on a course I did not want to interrupt, so I set it right after Episode 4. And also, like many other viewers, I was a bit surprised at Howard's confession to Peggy during that episode so I needed to write something regarding that.  
> A bit about how I planned the whole thing – I basically wanted certain scenes to happen and certain discussions to happen. Namely, I wanted the first instance of Tony having a good conversation with his Dad that turns abruptly angry and it was supposed to happen in Part 3, but Steve decided to wax a lot of poetic about Peggy and vice versa so, Tony's POV had to be compressed and some of it punted to Part 6. Tony got his 'revenge' by a majority of that POV in Part 6, with Howard's POV coming in second. Bucky was always at the forefront of this story because truth be told, I absolutely love writing about him and had to somehow stick him in somewhere in any story where I have Steve involved.  
> The fights were written with my background in karate in mind, using some of the shadow sparring and katas I've learned over the years as well as mixed in with some of what was used from the CA:TWS movie for Steve and Bucky's fighting styles (which are pretty similar, except Bucky uses more knives, Steve, more his shield). For Red Skull!Steve, I based it more on how Steve and the Red Skull fought in CA:TFA.  
> Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading and see you in my next story!


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